For
the Royal Coronation Ceremony in Bangkok, Fuzion Far East was assigned
with the task of supplying, designing and installing the audio systems
for the event. Working alongside the Thai Royal Army, Fuzion provided a
Dante digital audio network managed by Symetrix processors.
Taking
place over three days, the Royal Coronation Ceremony included the Royal
Procession, in which the new king paid homage to the main Buddha images
at three major temples before returning to the Grand Palace. Fuzion
deployed a Dante digital audio network which consisted of 11 loops in a
star configuration. These were all managed by 49 Symetrix Radius 12×8
EX DSP units. The network racks included gigabit hubs, wireless antenna
couplers for active antennas, wireless mic receivers, power amplifiers
and power supplies. An analogue Allen & Heath mixer helped to
combine the signals while the computers aided the system administrator,
engineer, operators and CCTV feed.
‘The parade had many
microphones for instruments and for announcements, and so the audio
routing needed to change many times along the way,’ said Varuit
Rattapongfrom, Fuzion Far East’s technical director ‘For example, from
Point A1 to A5 was one band, then after that was a different band
playing different instruments and using different microphones. We also
provided the broadcast feed.’
The Symetrix Radius processors were
chosen as the best solution to this challenge. ‘The Symetrix processors
and Dante network worked very well, we didn’t need technical support,
and our client was very satisfied with the results,’ furthered
Rattapongfrom. ‘The Radius is reliable, the sound quality is very good,
and it’s easy to control. We mostly used the DSPs for routing and EQ.’
User control was provided for monitoring, levelling, feedback
suppression and the EQs.
More than a century old, St. Thomas High School enjoys a
gorgeous campus on prime Houston real estate. The Catholic institution’s
current building dates to 2002 and includes a gymnasium with a
surprising history: The gym originally was an aircraft hanger for B29
bombers, located 110 miles north of campus, until it was donated by an
alumnus, moved to St. Thomas, and reassembled.
The gym’s sound system has been through changes over the
years, too, culminating in a new Dante-enabled system designed and
installed by Houston multimedia systems-integration firm Touch Thirty
Three. The current system features two Renkus-Heinz loudspeaker clusters
managed by a Symetrix Prism 16×16 DSP, which works very well—but it
didn’t all come together at once.
“This installation started out very piecemeal,” recalls
Touch Thirty Three owner and principal design consultant Bruce Coffman.
“They had a terrible-sounding system in here and asked us to see if we
could do something to improve it. The first thing we did was to install a
new AMX control system, which dramatically improved how they were able
to use the old sound system. Once we made it easier to use, they
recognized the limitations of the system’s sound quality.”
As a result, about three years later, St. Thomas asked
Touch Thirty Three for a more extensive upgrade to the gymnasium sound
system. Because it’s the largest indoor gathering space on campus, the
room periodically doubles as a sanctuary for masses, hosting up to 1,200
worshippers. “For mass, they put carpet over the entire floor, they
bring in folding chairs, and they have a stage that goes at the far end
of the room,” Coffman reports. “It’s completely different than when the
room is used for sports. Because of the room’s dual use, we couldn’t put
in a typical sound cluster over center court, so we put a big
Renkus-Heinz T15-series Reference Point Array cluster at one end of the
room.”
To feed the array, Touch Thirty Three installed a Dante
network, centered around the Symetrix Prism 16×16 DSP. The Prism is
equipped with a Symetrix xIn 12 12-channel analog input expander, which
accommodates the school’s existing 12-channel audio snake. With this
rig, notes Coffman, “If they want to have a choir or a musical ensemble,
they’ve already got the wiring, and it all shows up on faders on the
AMX control system.”
The Renkus-Heinz T15-series array consists of four self-powered full-range point-source loudspeakers, each with a 15-inch woofer and a Complex Conic horn. “The cluster acts like one big speaker,” Coffman observes. “You can walk the floor, and you don’t hear any seams between coverage.” Coffman also specified two Renkus-Heinz two-way, 8-inch down fills to cover the “money seats” at the edge of the main pattern from the main cluster.
The single array, managed by the Symetrix Prism 16×16,
sounded great and delivered good coverage but challenges remained.
During basketball and volleyball games, it seemed odd to have the sound
coming from the far end of the room. And during mass, when less
experienced users turned the system up to reach the back of the room,
they encountered feedback problems with wireless lavalier mics and the
PZM mic atop the altar. So recently, when the school was doing a major
renovation, Touch Thirty-Three addressed the directionality and feedback
issues by installing a second, identical Renkus-Heinz T15-series array
over center court. The central array operates as the main system for
sports events and serves as a delay fill for the center and back of the
room during mass, enabling the front cluster to operate at a lower
volume and averting feedback.
Adding the second array and unifying the system went
smoothly, thanks in large part to the Symetrix Prism and SymNet Designer
software. “The great part about Symetrix equipment, along with the AMX
controller, is that we were able to give the school anything they
wanted,” Coffman offers. “All we had to do to expand the system was
reprogram the Prism, and Symetrix’ phenomenal support staff helped us do
some of that reprogramming work. SymNet lets us tailor how the
components operate together to turn it into a single, seamless system.”
Coffman especially likes the combination of Symetrix and
Renkus-Heinz products. “Symetrix processors and Renkus-Heinz speakers
are a great match for each other,” he asserts. “The Renkus-Heinz
clusters sounded great just the way they came from the factory, so I
could use SymNet to tweak the system’s functionality, rather than its
sound quality. The Symetrix Prism processor determines how the
components work together, depending on how the room is set up and the
purpose for which it’s being used.”
One of Touch Thirty-Three’s strengths as a company, notes
Coffman, is making a sophisticated system, such as the one in St. Thomas
High School’s gymnasium, easy to operate for the end user. “Symetrix
allows me as a system designer to do some pretty amazing stuff in the
background to make the system simpler for a user,” he posits. “Whatever
the school wants to do, whether for sports or mass, the Symetrix
processor, Renkus-Heinz loudspeakers, and AMX controller allow them to
do it seamlessly, and someone with a minimal amount of experience can
get very consistent, good sound. This works very well for St. Thomas
High School.”
Nestled in the center of scenic Bend, with a beautiful view of the Cascade Mountains-complete with a “Sundowner Hour” centered around sunset every day-is the Crux Fermentation Project, a brewery and tasting room with an informal and welcoming vibe, a constantly changing menu of beers on tap, and great food. The tasting room in the center of the brewery, which is built inside an old auto-transmission plant, is doing booming business. Crux has recently expanded its drinking and dining experience, adding a new outdoor live concert space with a selection of food carts and an indoor fine dining area with a patio. To provide high-quality audio for the entire space, local contractor AudioVisual Bend designed and installed a new networked sound system centered around a Symetrix Jupiter 8 DSP and ARC-2e wall panels.
“Crux is a local place that’s very influential on the local scene,” explains AudioVisual Bend AV Designer/Project Manager Tony Sprando. “They did a big remodel and went from what was basically a bar with a brewery attached and just a few food items to a full outside concert area.” However, Crux was juggling two different audio systems, neither of them adequate: One was for mics and live acts and the other was designed for residential use. AV Bend replaced both old systems with a modern commercial-grade audio network with four zones. Outdoors, there’s a live venue space with a deck for larger bands. Indoors, the tasting room offers a louder and more celebratory musical environment, in contrast to the fine dining area and the entryway, where the music is kept quieter. The fourth zone is a corner of the dining area that is reserved for smaller one- or two-person musical acts.
“The network allows audio broadcasting in any direction,” observes Sprando. “If we have a little one-person act inside, we can broadcast that outside, and if we have a band outside playing the concert space, we can broadcast that indoors as well. We installed an all-weather patch panel on the outdoor deck; bands just flip up the cover, plug in, and they’re ready to go.” The system outputs to Lab.gruppen amplifiers and weather-rated, pole-mounted QSC speakers for the outdoor venue. JBL CRV speakers, mounted horizontally, cover the patio, while additional CRVs in vertical arrays cover most of the indoor area. JBL Control-series pendant speakers handle the tasting room and entryway. “They have digital signage with menus and more that’s all tied into this,” Sprando adds.
One major reason Sprando and the AV Bend team favor Symetrix is that the processors are easy to program, and the controllers are user-friendly. “Symetrix processors don’t require a lot of hoops to jump through in order to log in and get moving,” Sprando confirms. “User error goes way down; we greatly reduce service calls. And the customers love the Symetrix ARC-2e wall panel; with only three buttons, we market it based on how easy it is to use. The Jupiter 8 also supports Symetrix ARC-WEB for wireless remote control via smartphones and tablets, and Crux’s Pandora background music is now integrated smoothly with the mic and line inputs for easy control from one app.”
AudioVisual Bend does a lot of upgrades, often replacing outdated systems with up-to-date networks based on Symetrix processors. “A lot of the systems we replace are based on knobs and various connectivity devices that have to be manually operated to get audio to the zones,” Sprando relates. “You have to go back into the IT closet to make things work. We replace that with a Symetrix DSP, and you still have all of that control but it’s controlled from out in the listening environment with three buttons on an ARC wall plate or wirelessly from a phone or tablet, using ARC-WEB.”
Sprando notes that both customer and contractor benefit from the ability to service the system remotely. “The Jupiter 8 rack is never touched once we’re done,” he details. “It’s mounted, you lock the door, and there’s no need to go in for day-to-day use. If we have to service these systems, the turnaround time is second to none, thanks to the Symetrix remote-access capability. You just get a laptop and plug it into the switch, and we remote in and make the changes. We can go in and not only turn levels up and down but work with EQ and compression to really dial in our sound for each zone. The flexibility is great, and so is the sound quality.”
“We’ve been using Symetrix processors for six years or more,” Sprando concludes. “The day of the line/mic mixer with knobs in a rack is really over.”
At the end of the 1960s, Sunriver, Oregon, was constructed as a planned community 20 miles southwest of thecity of Bend. The 2010 census shows only 1,393 residents but its location at the base of the Cascade Range makes it a vacation destination, and resort properties make up much of the town. The Sunriver Homeowners Association Aquatic and Recreation Center (SHARC) opened in 2012, providing indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a fitness center, and meeting and event spaces.
By 2019, however, the original sound and video systems at SHARC were in need of an upgrade, which precipitated a call to Bend-based AV design/build company Audio Visual Bend. “There was no new construction at that time; it was purely an end-of-life AV system upgrade,” reports AV Bend AV Designer/Project Manager Tony Sprando. Nevertheless, it was not a small project, as numerous areas required coverage, including the pool areas, a fitness center, eatery, store, and lobby, plus an amphitheater that holds up to 1,250 guests and 4 meeting rooms accommodating up to 650 people.
SHARC wanted to retain whatever portions of the existing system could continue to serve effectively, so the project involved upgrading some existing components and reusing and adjusting others, as well as installing one Symetrix Edge and one Symetrix Radius 12×8 EX DSP. The Edge hosts up to 4 I/O expansion cards, in this case configured for 12 analog inputs and 4 analog outputs, which it integrates with 128-channel (64×64) redundant Dante networking. The Radius 12×8 EX offers 12 analog inputs, 8 analog outputs, 128-channel Dante, and an expansion slot, filled at SHARC with 4 channels of analog output.
The Radius handles programming for the entire audio system, while its I/O services the event and meeting spaces. The I/O in the Edge is divided between the event and meeting spaces and the public spaces. Background music and paging for the public spaces required setting up a total of 12 zones.
The system Sprando found on his arrival used analog signal runs exclusively, so the conversion to a Dante digital audio network was a key improvement. The installed Ashly Audio amplifiers were upgraded to accept input signals over Dante, and the audio equipment in public spaces, pool areas, and the amphitheater were connected to the Dante network. Bose speakers and Crestron controls at the site were retained, as was nearly all of the cabling. “We had to relocate some CAT5 and CAT6 Ethernet cable to get all of the Dante jacks in place, but other than that, the wire was 90 percent there,” Sprando details. Only minimal adjustments to existing equipment were required, such as adjusting the speakers for better coverage.
The Crestron controls functioned well with the Symetrix devices. “The client wanted to keep the type of control system they had in place to maintain its familiarity,” states Sprando. “We had to upgrade the Crestron equipment but it really integrated seamlessly with the Symetrix units. There were no hitches.”
The system accepts a variety of sources: a cable box for video and music playback; Pandora for Business/Mood Media boxes; a plethora of wireless microphones for the meeting spaces, which can be combined or split; and media patch points on panels to simplify connections for tasks like capturing an audio feed playing in the room to a video camera while recording video. The patch points get used for weddings or to feed local TV stations working onsite. Since the facility is operated by an association, media patching is also used to record board meetings.
The addition of the Symetrix DSPs also greatly simplified maintenance issues. “The ability to make changes and troubleshoot using internal staff and resources was nonexistent when we came in,” explains Sprando, “so when a change of some sort was needed, SHARC had to bring in someone from out of town, which was very expensive. Plus, file system and access was quite limited; the tech had to bring in a computer to make the change locally and needed the right software version or things could go bad. It was very convoluted. Symetrix has their editing program residing in the DSP unit, which makes it easy for SHARC to edit the system remotely. We gave them a Chromebook, so they have remote access all the time. The property is really big, and the IT department that manages the system is not even located onsite. But now, even on a tech’s day off, he can just log in from home and make any adjustments.”
Sprando feels training is key to making effective installations and gives kudos for the support AV Bend received in that area. “During the SHARC project, we found it very important to get the latest certifications on the Symetrix gear and on Dante, which we did through the whole process. Symetrix and Audinate were very accommodating with those training and continuing education steps. That sharpened us, as well as making the end product significantly better.”
The What: Symetrix is used its appearance at Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) to debut a new version of Composer, its configuration software for Radius NX, Edge, Radius, Prism, and Solus NX DSPs. Composer 7.1 for Windows adds support for the Visionary Solutions PacketAV Duet video encoder and decoder, Symetrix T-5 Touchscreen controllers, and PD-1 Telco Dialer. A host of other software improvements makes system design and management more flexible.
The What Else: All programming and routing of Visionary Solutions PacketAV Duet
video encoders and decoders is now directly integrated within Composer
7.1. In addition, Composer indirectly supports select third-party
non-Dante encoders/decoders that use the same control protocol as the
Duets.
Like Symetrix ARC controllers, the T-5 Touchscreen can control every user-facing function of an installed AV system using Symetrix’s SymVue interface.
As with Symetrix DSPs, integrators can now manage any T-5 Touchscreen
from Composer, as each device has its own IP address on the network.
Composer 7.1 also supports the PD-1 Telco Dialer,
which lets meeting leaders dial remote attendees into conference calls
using a traditional telephone keypad rather than a touchscreen.
Composer
7.1 adds several workflow enhancements. Time/date and special character
export in the SymVue for Web interface is now present. New sizing
handles (horizontal, vertical, and a corner handle for sizing the entire
window at once) allow resizing of objects in control screens on the
fly. This and expanded design sheet sizes make it easier to optimize
installed systems for different remote-control scenarios, including T-5
Touchscreens, smartphones, and tablets.
A new crosspoint audio
delay is available in the Super Matrix for mono matrix modules. The Site
ID field has been increased to 65535 addresses, allowing different
groups of DSPs and other devices to coexist on the same network without
interfering with each other; two devices in different groups can use the
same remote controller number. For diagnostics and system design,
Composer 7.1 can now trace signal paths backward and forward
simultaneously. Editing of module channel names have been further
improved, featuring expanded copy-paste ability.
As in previous
versions, systems integrators can diagnose any device in a
Composer-designed system by simply launching a web browser and entering
the device’s IP address.
The Bottom Line:
All of the above features add up to an expanded universe of use cases
for Symetrix networked AV systems and let the installer scale systems to
meet clients’ needs quickly and efficiently.
Mark and Rachelle Graham bring over 30 years audio industry experience to the team.
Creators of high-performance digital audio processing solutions
Symetrix has announced that Mark and Rachelle Graham have joined the
team as the new owners of the business.
Mark Graham brings over 30 years of audio industry experience to the team, filling the CEO role.
“This
is an exciting opportunity for us,” he said. “We have admired Symetrix,
both the company and the people, for a long time. I’m really looking
forward to building on the successful foundation built over the past
four decades and maintaining the rock-solid reputation of the company.”
Symetrix’s current owner, Julia Ogden, has been considering a change in ownership of the company for some time after 32 years with Symetrix. “I knew I could never sell this business unless it was to the right people. It had to be someone who cared about the business and all the exceptional people who work here, and our business partners around the globe,” she said. “I was looking for continuity and an alliance with the same high standards and core values that sets Symetrix apart from the crowd. I believe the Graham’s are the perfect fit.”
Mark Graham was CEO of LOUD Technologies for the last eight years.
Before that, he was the president of Crown Audio, a Harman company. His
industry experience includes working for Hewlett Packard in their test
and measurement division and owning his own audio contracting business.
“Mark has a depth of industry experience and engineering expertise that
is exactly the right background to accelerate the growth trajectory of
the company, especially with his laser-focus on continuing to deliver
innovative products,” Ogden explained.
Rachelle Graham has been a
marketing manager for several large organisations including Agilent
Technologies, the University of Kansas and BioServe Space Technologies,
one of NASA’s Commercial Space Centers.
Symetrix is poised to launch several new products in the next couple of months: “The launch of our new products will move ahead seamlessly. We’ve put a lot of thought into how to make the transition as smooth as possible so that none of our deadlines slip. We will assure that Symetrix customers continue to experience the benefit of our ease of doing business, award-winning customer service and tech support, and products that provide the solutions and reliability they have come to expect from Symetrix,” added Ogden.
Symetrix will remain at the same location, and all employees will be retained. Julia Ogden will continue to work for the company throughout a transition period and will also serve on the company’s board of directors going forward.
