AV Issue 48

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issue #48 $6.95 AUD

20 YEARS IN THE HOUSE: CLARINGBOLD REFLECTS DON’T BLAME THE MIC: BOARDROOM ACOUSTICS 4K, 8K, TRANSPARENT, MIRROR: DISPLAY TRENDS

ELEGANT DESIGN, LIFELIKE AUDIO. MicroexTM Wireless Systems Enterprise-scale Microphone Solutions for Managed AV Environments ™

Microex Wireless systems bring vivid, lifelike audio to meetings, panel discussions, teleconferences and other applications in managed AV environments — from signature boardrooms and concentrated multi-room environments to networked corporate campuses.

• • • • • • •

Flexible mic options – Gooseneck, boundary, bodypack and handheld microphones Modern, low-prole designs – Fit comfortably into diverse AV environments Dante™ digital audio networking – Low latency, multichannel audio over Ethernet networks Advanced rechargeability – Smart lithium-ion batteries enable remote monitoring Browser-based control software – Comprehensive system setup and real time control Automated frequency coordination – Ensures clean frequencies for every wireless channel Encrypted wireless – AES-256 protection for secure over the air wireless audio

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Contact us on 1800 00 77 80 or email av@madisontech.com.au

Editorial Stats, Damn Stats & ZettaStats

Advertising Office: +61 (0)2 9986 1188 PO Box 6216, Frenchs Forest, NSW 2086 Australia

Editorial Office: +61 (0)3 9998 1998 PO Box 295, Ballarat, VIC 3353 Australia

Editorial Director: Christopher Holder (chris@avapac.net) Publisher: Philip Spencer (philip@avapac.net) Graphic Designer: Daniel Howard (daniel@avapac.net) Additional Design: Dominic Carey (dominic@avapac.net) Accounts: Jaedd Asthana (jaedd@alchemedia.com.au) Circulation Manager: Mim Mulcahy (subscriptions@avapac.net) Cover: Auditoria

alchemedia publishing pty ltd (ABN: 34 074 431 628) PO Box 6216, Frenchs Forest, NSW 2086 Australia info@alchemedia.com.au All material in this magazine is copyright © 2015 Alchemedia Publishing Pty Ltd. The title AV is a registered Trademark.

Apart from any fair dealing permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. The publishers believe all information supplied in this magazine to be correct at the time of publication. They are not in a position to make a guarantee to this effect and accept no liability in the event of any information proving inaccurate. After investigation and to the best of our knowledge and belief, prices, addresses and phone numbers were up to date at the time of publication. It is not possible for the publishers to ensure that advertisements appearing in this publication comply with the Trade Practices Act, 1974. The responsibility is on the person, company or advertising agency submitting or directing the advertisement for publication. The publishers cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions, although every endeavour has been made to ensure complete accuracy. 3/8/2015

W

elcome to another issue of AV-over-IP. Well, strictly speaking it’s another issue of AV Asia Pacific, but a quick leaf through this current edition makes me wonder if we should be looking at a name change.

Just a quick stocktake of significant AV-overIP stories: Harman/AMX buying SVSi is big news. Clearly SVSi has a couple of years head start on the audiovisual global behemoth, and in the long tradition of 300lb US gorillas, it reached into its deep pockets to buy the IP (intellectual property) of the IP (Internet protocol) specialist.

You can’t talk about AV-over-IP without talking about audio-over-IP wunderkinds, Dante. Audio manufacturers have been lining up to ensure their gear is Dante-enabled. The latest thing from Dante is Via, a fascinating new software development that will draw any USB-, Firewire- or Thunderbolt-enabled audio device into the Dante orbit. We’ll be telling you more about Via next issue.

Another issue of the magazine and another story on a WWI exhibition, this time we talk to IEC Exhibitions which has put together an extraordinary travelling exhibition based on artefacts from the Imperial War Museum in London. There are 17 projectors and about the same again of touchscreens and displays.

Continuing the AV-over-IP theme, each is now an HD-Base-T network endpoint. It’s an elegant solution and IEC’s Ki McGinty is smiling ear to ear.

With the rise and rise of AV-over-IP, the ability to remotely oversee a complex and sophisticated system such as the IEC exhibition via a web browser; with the rise and rise of M2M monitoring in an ‘internet of everything’ (IoE) world; and with more and more of our audiovisual assets and media sitting in the cloud, it’s sometimes a little scary to reflect on just how much we rely on a speedy, reliable internet connection.

Just to make you shift a little uneasily in your chair, let me share with you some of the more terrifying conclusions of the recent ‘Cisco Visual Networking Index Global Traffic Forecast Update, 2014-2019’.

Here’s the good news first: we’ve had to invent a new prefix to the word ‘byte’ to describe the IP traffic in 2019 — the annual run rate will be in the order of 2 zettabytes. What’s a zettabyte?

It’s one trillion gigabytes or close enough to 10 to the power of 21 bytes. Put another way, 2.0 zettabytes is the equivalent of 30 hours of ultraHD video per person of the world population.

In our region, Indonesia is experiencing the craziest growth (36% annual) with Australia’s 22% growth (in an admittedly more mature market) looking comparatively pedestrian.

The Asia Pacific region leads the global pack for the number of connected devices, with an estimated 10.5 billion PCs, smartphones, fridges, projectors, digital signs, VC appliances and media servers clogging the internet arteries by 2019.

As you’d expect, it’s video that’s taking the lion’s share of the IP traffic, accounting for an estimated 80% of global IP traffic in 2019 (up from 67% in 2014) – something to consider when you’re cursing all the Netflix subscribers on a Saturday night, waiting for NBN Co. to start digging up your street, and debating which century Malcolm ‘wireless oughtta be fine’ Turnbull and his ilk are living in.  Christopher Holder Editorial Director, chris@avapac.net

CCS 1000 D Digital Discussion System Compact yet versatile

The all-new CCS 1000 D Digital Discussion System is highly compact, easy-to-set-up, and easy-to-use. Yet it is packed with so many smart features and exceptional versatility that it makes every meeting more productive and highly rewarding.

Designed for plug-and-play installation, the CCS 1000 D Digital Discussion System is ideal for small to medium scale meeting areas such as town halls, business centers and courtrooms as well as for rental companies who can use it for their day-to-day mobile set-ups. Find out how you can take advantage, contact your nearest Bosch representative today or visit: www.boschsecurity.com Bosch National Order Desk: 1300 1 Bosch (26724)

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Incredible Multicam No matter how many cameras you have on your shoot, DaVinci Resolve 12 lets you edit programs shot on multiple cameras faster than ever before. Quickly sync angles using timecode, in/out points, or even automatically based on sound and then watch them all playback in realtime while you cut between angles on the fly!

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Now you can create the perfect mix by adding VST and Audio Unit plugins to entire tracks or individual clips! Resolve’s sample accurate playback and smooth tape style scrubbing let you precisely edit audio in the timeline, or you can record fader automation using the new mixer!

You can even export directly to ProTools for finishing!

DaVinci is the world’s most trusted name in color and has been used to grade more Hollywood films, TV shows, and commercials than anything else. Now you can switch between professional editing and Resolve’s legendary color tools with a single click. DaVinci Resolve 12 goes far beyond anything you’ll find in any other editing systems!

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Issue 48 REGULARS

32

NEWS AV industry and product news highlights from the AV website.

10

ON THE PANEL WAGON Consumerland display trends making pro waves.

16

THEATRE HITS JACKPOT Laycock Community Theatre installs dream PA.

18

INTEGRATE EDUCATION Telstra Store signage case study leads Integrate education program.

20

INDUSTRY UPDATE News from the AV associations: InfoComm and AETM

48

TERMINATION Crystal ball naval gazing.

50

FEATURES

36

28

BRIGHT NIGHT OUT Big projectors, big canvasses, big ideas.

22

OPERA HOUSE CURTAIN CALL David Claringbold reflects on 20 years at The House.

28

AHEAD OF THE GAMES European Games makes debut splash with big local tech and creative team.

32

IN THE TRENCHES WW1 Centenary Exhibition sticks an RJ45 into the Red Baron’s Fokker.

36

TUTORIAL

22

18

16

BOARDROOM ACOUSTICS Don’t blame the mic. Treat the room.

44

PHASE APPROACH TO AV DESIGN Better Processes. Better Projects

49

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NEWS

ASIA PACIFIC

Presents

Rewarding Excellence Celebrating Innovation AVIAs 2015 Shortlist Another high quality field has assembled for the 2015 Audio Visual Industry Awards. A strong and well credentialed field of contenders has been whittled down to the crème de la crème. So with no small amount of anticipation we announce the 2015 AVIAs shortlist!

AV in Commercial/Government

AV in Education $500k+

Auditoria: SOH Wireless Microphone and IEM Upgrade

Pro AV Solutions – VIC: Northern Health – technical, training and research precinct

Parity Technology Consulting: Library at The Dock (Docklands)

Umow Lai: Jeffrey Smart Building at UniSA

Rutledge AV: Digital vision upgrade for MCEC AV in Exhibition/Display $100k+ Holly: First World War galleries redevelopment at Australian War Memorial Gilfillan Soundwork & Steensen Varming: Roll of Honour lighting and sound system at AWM Museum of NZ Te Papa Tongarewa: Gallipoli – Scale of Our War exhibition AV in Exhibition/Display sub $100k Creative Vision Australia: Wargaming stand at PAX Expo Rutledge AV: Darwin Museum – Cyclone Tracy – 40 Years On – Anniversary Exhibition

AETM the association for managers of audiovisual & educational technology

ALIA

AV in Education sub $500k AT Controls: Deakin Audiovisual Room Control System (DARCS) Control Gadgets & Monash University eSolutions: Monash University Universal Control System Software InDesign Technologies: USC – Learning and Teaching Hub – Tiered Teaching Space AV in Production 32 Hundred Lighting: Paint the Town & Harbour Bridge lighting at Vivid Sydney Impact AV Australia: Dockside Pavilion, Sydney Technical Direction Company (TDC): Technical Wizardry at Vivid Sydney 2014

ASIA PACIFIC

Now you can Write, Touch and Swipe.

The new finger touch Epson MeetingMate will change meetings forever.

Collaborate with your team in multiple locations with this simple to use, interactive projector.

It’s the complete solution for all meeting scenarios including presentations, brainstorming, video conferencing and training sessions.

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create.

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Learn how you can do more with less, visit www.epson.com.au/meetingmate or call 1300 130 194.

010

NEWS

HARMAN ACQUIRES SVSi

DANTE VIA SHOWCASE

YAMAHA DUGAN REVOLABS

Harman International has announced it has acquired SVSi and will be marketing the networked AV range under its AMX brand as ‘AMX SVSI Networked AV Solutions’. Harman Professional president Blake Augsburger: “For more than six years we have been steadily introducing new products to serve growing customer demand for IP-based products. With the acquisition of SVSi, we will accelerate our development plan with the addition of extraordinary expertise from the SVSi team.” SVSi president and founder Andy Whitehead: “Our products have been adopted by a wide number and variety of leading organisations in the entertainment, government, education, and corporate sectors. By joining forces with Harman, we can deliver the benefits of our solutions to more customers, faster than we could do on our own.” Two new releases in the extensive SVSi product family include the eight-model SVSI N1000 AV-over-IP encoder and decoder series, delivering visually lossless HD with near-zero latency, and an H.264 windowing processor with support for nine sources in a single viewing window over a standard data network.

AMX: www.amx.com/svsi

Dante creator Audinate is soon to release something called Via. The new software application extends audio networking to include USB, Firewire and Thunderboltenabled audio devices as well as any audio application, transforming computer audio interfaces and soundcards into networked devices that can connect with each other and more than 400 Dante-enabled products. During demonstrations, Dante Via bridged multiple audio devices and applications directly to an audio network and to one another. The company says it delivers unprecedented routing of computerbased audio, allowing a wealth of readily available applications and devices to be connected easily and inexpensively. Dante Via unlocks multiple new use cases, including easily extending sound to overflow rooms, isolating and playing application audio in public locations, and connecting local audio devices such as headphones to a Dante network to enable easy channel monitoring.

Audinate: www.audinate.com

Yamaha has launched a new open architecture signal processor, MRX7-D, for commercial installations requiring complicated signal processing and higher I/O counts such as convention centres, conference room and hotels. For conference applications the MRX7-D deploys a newly designed AEC (Acoustic Echo Canceller) which can be able controlled from the Executive Elite products from Yamaha subsidiary Revolabs. It also features an automatic mixer designed

by Dan Dugan Sound Design as one of the components.

Dan Dugan Sound Design CEO, Dan Dugan: “The combination of the Dugan Speech System algorithm along with Revolabs microphones will make the MRX7-D an unbeatable voice processing system in the commercial market.” The processor deploys Yamaha’s technology for sound masking with the introduction of a new ‘speech privacy’ component. It’s equipped with eight mic/line in eight analogue outputs, two stereo RCA inputs, and 64 channels of Dante I/O to allow simple integration with hundreds of Dante enabled products in larger system applications. A mini YGDAI card can also be used to expand local I/O and connect to other digital products.

Yamaha Pro Audio: www.yamahaproaudio.com

NEWS IN BRIEF:

Listen Technologies has added a new infrared Language Distribution System to its ListenIR assistive listening range, to get multilingual language environments up and running faster. The release follows the introduction of iDSP IR and the LT-84 IR transmitter/radiator combo. Listen Technologies’ IR products are well suited to assistive listening and language interpretation in boardrooms, courtrooms, or other environments where privacy is important.

National Audio Systems: 1800 441 400 or www.nationalaudio.com.au Listen Technologies: www.listentech.com

Vaddio, a leading manufacturer and OEM distributor of specialty PTZ cameras, high-end camera control systems and USB peripherals used in the broadcast, audio/visual and videoconferencing marketplace has appointed Midwich as a key distributor in Australia and New Zealand. Mark Lowe, General Manager of Midwich: “Our partnership with Vaddio will complete Midwich’s comprehensive solution for today’s demanding meeting and conferencing spaces.”

Midwich: 1300 666 099 or www.midwich.com.au Vaddio: www.vaddio.com

Streaming Audio to a Network of Smart Devices: AV Asia Pacific, in association with Sennheiser, has another free webinar planned covering new developments in audio streaming direct to smart devices. Fresh markets are emerging for this new area of audio streaming, including cinemas, museums, public institutions as well as hearing assist for the hearing and sight impaired. Sennheiser’s Jason Grbevski will explain where the demand will come from and, technically, how you’ll meet it.

Sign up to our e-news on the AV homepage to be the first to hear when this webinar will be scheduled.

• Get your daily news fix at www.avapac.net

Lots going on at the company formerly known as IDT. After being bought out by a UK AV giant, IDT has moved to a new headquarters and changed its name to reflect the fact it’s now part of the Midwich empire.

The new complex has room for training, demo facilities and a better tech support environment.

New address: Lot 4 Parklands Estate, 23 South Street, Rydalmere NSW 2116. While we're at it, be aware that Midwich now represents Exterity and Vaddio in Australia.

Midwich: 1300 666 099 or www.midwich.com.au

ClearOne has launched a new series of integrated packages in its Collaborate line of professional collaboration solutions, claiming it is the first technology that combines low cost appliances with powerful, scalable, cloud collaboration capabilities. The Collaborate media appliance provides standards-based video conferencing with an assortment of collaboration tools including wireless presentation and whiteboarding, streaming, recording, multi-party conferencing and the new Spontania cloud-based meeting room.

PAVT: (03) 9264 8000 or www.pavt.com.au Clear One: www.clearone.com

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NEWS

ATLONA 8-INPUT 4K/UHD MATRIX SWITCHER

BENQ sRGB COLORIFIC

CHRISTIE 4K 120HZ OMNI

Designed as the centrepiece of complex AV systems, Atlona has introduced its AT-UHD-CLSO-824, an eight-input, two output, 4K/UHD @ 60Hz matrix switcher with mirrored HDMI and HDBaseT outputs.

The latest addition in the company’s CLSO series of multi-format matrix switchers for commercial and education use, the new model incorporates three HDBaseT and four HDMI inputs, one VGA analogue video input and two HDBaseT outputs, each with a mirrored HDMI output, making it ideal for conference rooms, classrooms, and training environments.

Additional features include two microphone inputs with 48V phantom power, Ethernet-enabled 100m HDBaseT signal extension, 10 local RS-232 ports, balanced analogue stereo output, and a web-based GUI for switcher configuration. With mirrored HDMI and HDBaseT outputs, the matrix switcher accommodates a variety of meeting and classroom needs, such as a confidence monitor, dual displays, and divisible rooms, with one screen per room.

Midwich: 1300 666 099 or www.midwich.com.au Atlona: atlona.com

BenQ has a new roster of 100% sRGB Colorific projectors. BenQ reckons sRGB — widely used for colour accuracy in smartphones, monitors, cameras etc — displays produce a richer colour saturation and, as a result, deliver more accurate images with a higher perceived overall brightness. The Colorific projectors are designed for small- to medium-size conference rooms and large venues and include the PU9730, PU9530, SU964, SU922, and HC1200. For large venues, the PU9730 and PU9530 deliver 7000 and 6000 ANSI lumens, respectively. Both models feature WUXGA resolution; 360-degree rotation; motorised zoom, focus, and lens shift; plus a range of connectivity options including HDBaseT for enhanced installation flexibility. The P-Series projectors offer seven interchangeable lenses and colour wheels allowing placement virtually anywhere, all while boosting midtone colours for more lifelike content. Rounding out the projectors’ administration are convenient features like LAN Control to support Creston Roomview, PJLink, and AMX systems, and energy-saving options that reduce total cost of ownership (TCO).

BenQ: www.benq.com

The Christie Mirage 304K is designed for 3D applications and advanced visualisation for industries including automotive, location-based entertainment, government, military, oil and gas, biotechnology, and more. Featuring the powerful Christie TruLife Electronics platform, the projector supports a videoprocessing pipeline of up to 1.2 Gigapixels. Providing a variety of input options including DisplayPort, HDMI and HD-SDI, and built-in Christie Twist for curved screens and blended array visualisation applications, the image quality, colour and uniformity of Christie Mirage 304K provide visual accuracy in the product development process. The durability of Christie Mirage 304K provides 24/7 reliability in fully immersive virtual experiences while the stereoscopic capability of the Mirage 304K enables engineering work collaboration and visualisation of highlycomplex data.

Christie Digital: www.christiedigital.com

TASCAM DSD EDITOR

QSC’S CONFERENCE CALL

d&b INSTALLATION AMPLIFIERS

Tascam has released Hi-Res Editor, a free application that supports up to 11.2MHz DSD files or 384k WAV. The software allows playback and export of DSD files without intermediate conversion to PCM audio, and is available as a download for Windows from the Tascam website. DSD Audio can be played natively through supporting USB devices such as the TEAC UD-501 and HA-P90SD. In cases where a PCM interface is used, or even the computer’s built-in audio, the software automatically plays DSD back through the interface at any available sample rate. A section of the DSD file can be exported as a new file, either in DSD or WAV format, to separate one long recording into individual tracks.

Two DSD files can also be combined into a new file, for example when a file over 2GB is divided. DSD audio can be converted to PCM, and vice-versa, for burning to CD or online distribution. In addition, Hi-Res Editor can edit the gain level for WAV format audio.

CMI: (03) 9315 2244 or cmi.com.au Tascam: www.tascam.com

QSC’s Systems Conferencing Solutions combines the new Q-Sys Core 110f DPS appliance, TSC-7 Tabletop Touchscreen and SPA Power Amplifier. The Core 110f is the latest addition to QSC’s Q-Sys lineup, which are built on Intel-based technologies and a Linux operating system. The Core 110f allows AV integrators and IT managers to deliver its networking integration via Q-LAN, which uses IT standard Layer-3 protocols. The Core 110f’s can coexist with all other data, uses standard Ethernet switches, and is AES67-interoperable. The TSC-7t PoE Tabletop Touchscreen can be used on any Q-Sys networked audio solution including the new Core 110f. It functions as an elegant telephone dialler and can be used to control third-party devices via the Core. Additionally, the TSC-7t meets a common BYOD audio need: when meeting participants run UC or web conferencing applications on their own devices, they can easily connect the two-way audio from that device to the Q-Sys system using the Bluetooth or Micro USB On-The-Go (OTG) connections on the TSC-7t.

Technical Audio Group: (02) 9519 0900 or www.tag.com.au QSC Systems: www.qsc.com

d&b audiotechnik has introduced its first amplifiers designed for permanent installation. The four-channel, 2U 10D and 30D amplifiers deliver 700W and 1600W per channel respectively, and share the same DSP platform and capabilities as the d&b D20 amplifier and the flagship D80. Both models provide comprehensive d&b loudspeaker management and switchable filter functions, and incorporate two 16-band equalisers comprising parametric, notch, asymmetric and shelving filters along with up to 10 seconds of delay for each of the four channels. To aid integration into existing installations, the new models offer five programmable general purpose input/output pins, so external devices can be used for control or detection functions. They provide four analogue and four digital AES/EBU inputs, all of which can be summed and routed to any of the four outputs. This extended input matrix allows all eight inputs to be used simultaneously. The devices can be accessed using either CAN-Bus, or via Ethernet using the Open Control Architecture (OCA) protocols.

National Audio Systems: 1800 441 440 or www.nationalaudio.com.au d&b audiotechnik: www.dbaudio.com

• Get your daily news fix at www.avapac.net

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014

NEWS

IT’S dLIVE!

CASIO LAMPFREE MOVE

HIRE MANAGEMENT GODSEND

Allen & Heath has surprised a few people with the release of large format dLive digital console. Perhaps it’s the Digico corporate link but A&H has opted for a FPGA-based core, which makes for some powerful and flexible architecture, processing, expansion options etc. The dLive system architecture separates MixRack and surface with the processing brain housed in the MixRack. Three MixRacks are available, DM32 (32 input), DM48 and DM64, along with three accompanying control surfaces S3000, S5000 and S7000. Each rack contains a XCVI core providing capacity for 128 inputs with full processing and 16 dedicated stereo FX returns, offering 160 inputs to the mix. On the other side are 64 fully configurable mix buses with full processing on all channels. dLive incorporates the ‘DEEP’ processing portfolio of embedded plug-ins, alongside its 16-slot FX racks, featuring Allen & Heath’s range of FX emulations.

Technical Audio Group: (02) 9519 0900 or www.tag.com.au Allen & Heath: dlive.allen-heath.com

Casio is bolding setting its ‘LampFree’ course with a new-gen projector range. The XJ-V1 Core Series projector uses a Laser and LED Hybrid technology, is pitched at the classroom/boardrooms, market. The XJV1 produces 2700 lumens and without lamps or filters, there’s a significant reduction in power consumption and maintenance. The XJ-V1 achieves full brightness within five seconds of start up, which is one of the key benefits of LampFree technology. It can also be turned off and stored away immediately as it does not require cool down time. The XJ-V1 features a user-friendly interface, and has a 20,000-hour lifespan and minimal maintenance. The XJ-V1 Core Series is an affordably priced projector (A$999 RRP).

Casio Projectors: 1300 768 112 or www.casioprojector.shriro.com.au

Since launching on September 1, 2014, over 385 hire businesses in the AV, Production, Lighting and Events sector have signed up to cloud hire management software, Current RMS, quickly identifying the benefits of managing hire processes online, from any device and location. Within one centralised system, businesses can easily manage their hire business – creating jobs from enquiries through to quotation and order stage, managing equipment availability, barcode labels, customisable documentation, scheduling activities for staff, transport and invoicing, the system effortlessly covers it all. Its modern user interface uses icons, images and colour to help illustrate important information in a simple, easy to understand way – for any level of user. At the start of 2015, Current RMS officially became a partner of the popular cloud accounting software Xero, offering seamless integration with this easy to use product, streamlining the rental cycle that one step further. A 30-day trial is available.

Current RMS: www.current-rms.com

JBL EXPAND PD

MCG & ETIHAD LED WRAP

SENNHEISER FEATHERWEIGHT

JBL’s new PD500 Series loudspeakers is an extension of the popular PD Series loudspeakers, which are found in plenty of stadiums and arenas around the world. The PD500 Series will feature five new models and will offer the high power, excellent pattern control and smooth coverage found in all PD Series loudspeakers. The PD500 Series can be used in a variety of applications including sports facilities, performance spaces, auditoriums, or worship facilities. The new series consists of four hornloaded 15-inch two-way systems and one dual 15-inch subwoofer. The loudspeakers use JBL Progressive Transition (PT) waveguides, coupled with the 2432H 1.5-inch exit, three-inch voice coil compression driver and the 2031H 15-inch low-frequency transducer that features high sensitivity and low power compression for high continuous SPL capability. It is horn-loaded for additional sensitivity and improved pattern control.

Jands: (02) 9582 0909 or www.jands.com.au JBL: www.jblpro.com

Melbourne’s two biggest sporting venues have installed parapet LED panels from Videro LED digital signage systems. The dual-level digital boundary signage came online in preparation for the 2015 AFL season. Handling the task was integrator and Videro agent, Corporate Initiatives. The 10mm pixel pitch LED from Videro was chosen for it quick refresh rate (good for slow mo replays) and the fact it could operate happily at any level of brightness. The screens are durable — can handle a good hip and shoulder — and handle the elements. Ultimately, the screens are for the fans. “Each of the home teams over the 45 games will have full control in the lead-up to the game to make it for the fans” asserts MCC CEO Mike Gough, with the main goal of the screens being to create a better experience for the fans using insights and data such as goal celebrations, live game statistics, momentum shift alerts, real time data feeds and social media integration.

Corporate Initiatives: 1300 242 742 or www.ciasia.com.au Videro LED: www.videroled.com

Sennheiser’s new SL Headmic 1 presenter’s microphone is a featherweight, at just 7g. But it offers powerful sound and is sturdy enough for the toughest corporate applications. The high-quality condenser uses the proven capsule of the omnidirectional MKE1 broadcasting microphone, while its sleek, elegant design ensures that it is completely unobtrusive when worn. The SL Headmic 1 is easy to use and is connected to a bodypack transmitter via the 3.5mm jack cable included. The microphone can be optimally adapted to the shape of the head, and the microphone boom can be worn either on the left or right. Its modular design means that all components of the SL Headmic 1 can be easily and conveniently replaced.

Sennheiser: www.sennheiser.com

A NEW GENERATION OF AUDIO CAPTURE FOR VIDEO

DR-60DMKII

DR-70D

pty/ltd

DR-680MKII

For more information about Tascam audio capture products please visit: www.tascam.com.au

016

NEWS

On The Panel Wagon What is consumer land’s impact on pro AV display tech?

Text:/ Andrew MacColl

A range of architectural software/hardware solutions were on show that allow striking video walls to be a hero piece in all sorts of different sizes, and orientations (above).

I

nfoComm 2015: the annual AV must-see event, where industry pros can indulge their barely concealed inner geek.

While it’s an exhibition attracting over 39,000 visitors and almost 1000 exhibitors, InfoComm kicks off days before punters are allowed onto the show floor. Hundreds of seminars, training sessions, professional qualification exams and interest group meetings are going on, one of which particularly piqued my interest – the annual Future Trends session — where I joined 350 other AV fanboys/girls for some crystal-ball gazing.

Before we get into some prognostication, you have to spare a thought for the poor convention centre AV staffers at an event like this. They are locked in a room with the industry’s elite from all corners of the globe, ready to pounce on the merest sniff of an AV snafu. And, to make matters worse, one of the projectors had been flickering on and off all morning! Just to rub salt in the wound, every presenter mentioned it… at length!

Some days the surround of the operator’s booth is just not high enough to hide behind!

WHAT RES IS THAT CRYSTAL BALL?

The Future Trends session began with a whirlwind review by Peter Putman of Kramer Electronics of recent consumer shows cheekily entitled ‘No Country for Old Electronics’. The AV trend he identified was all about 4K. For those of you who have not visited a Harvey Lee JB Retra-Hi-Fi retail outlet recently, 4K refers to the pixel count of Ultra HD. For those of you who thought your boring HD or Full HD or 2K is good enough, think again. It’s so yesterday’s news folks!

4K is the new HD.

The good news is the prices of the consumer tech continues to plummet. In the US currently, a 55-inch 2K LED TV will sell for under US$400. A 65-inch UHD from LG will go for under US$1000. Samsung retains about 38% of this market and Chinese manufacturers (watch this space) already hold 15%. The cost of manufacturing 4K panels is only a little more expensive than 2K so it seems inevitable that 2K panels will be entirely superseded before too long, going the way of CRT and SD tellies.

And if that isn’t all too fast for you, 8K resolution is very much a reality. ‘Where’s the content for these displays coming from?’ I hear you ask. ‘It’s enough to get a 720P broadcast of the football,’ I hear you say. Pah! Detail.

MORE PANEL MOVES

The other big mover in the consumer space is the panel technology itself. Samsung has been offering OLED (organic LED) for some time but the next generation of Quantum Dots is a competing technology that is brighter and offers a huge leap in contrast ratio. It’s already available in 4K and can be curved. I for one am really keen to see if these live up to the hype.

Other great stuff that InfoComm showcased: • Transparent LED panels where the image floats on a clear window-like panel. It’s great for digital signage and point of sale displays.

• A mirror-back LED which allows a mirror image to be altered on the screen while you watch. Panasonic has a big profile of high-tech beauty products, so this one will be a big hit with the cosmetics industry. Imagine sitting in front of

A Samsung mirror-back LED which allows a mirror image to be altered on the screen while you watch.

NEWS

3D projection mapping onto a Tesla (above).

017

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Drones are the rage. And anything in carbon fibre is cool.

a mirror and being shown how a makeup product, hair style or colour will look on you?

• Eyetracking and Gesture Control will hit consumer tech and then follow on into ProAV. The new range of smart devices will scroll as you read and you can interact with the display without ever touching it via gestures. I can see this hitting digital signage and consumer TVs and then presenters will be looking for it. Perhaps the slide clicker is an endangered species in the near future?

DRONING ON

Finally, and nothing to do with display tech: drones have hit professional AV. I’m yet to receive my first Amazon drone book delivery, and my guess is there are a bunch of regulatory hoops that Dick Smith (the bloke, not the store) would have us jump through before I do, but it’s a fascinating space. Drones are the new black! Small professional drones with live wireless video (and audio) seem destined for a place in the event world. The Future Trends panel discussion seemed to dismiss privacy and safety questions by saying these will be ‘worked out’. If they are ‘worked out’, I can see outdoor events being plagued by fleets of drones and risk assessments putting red flags on flying a drone around a ballroom for an awards dinner but watch this space.

WOW THE CROWDS

The marketing tag for this year’s show was ‘Wow’ and that word somehow seemed to fall from the lips of attendees over and over throughout the week. This was one slick show, with every aspect of the attendee experience considered and executed to the highest professional standard (except that blinking flickering projector!). I cannot wait to see how the industry rolls out the range of exciting products on offer.

Andrew MacColl is Staging Connections’ most senior technical practitioner. With over 30 years industry experience and 18 years at Staging Connections, Andrew sets the direction for purchasing and deployment of all show technology.

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018

NEWS

Community Theatre Hits d&b Jackpot

T

he headline ‘Community Theatre Hits d&b Jackpot’ reflects how many readers will feel: green with envy.

Laycock Street Community Theatre is based in Gosford, north of Sydney. It’s not high profile; it goes about its business like any other community theatre, staging a whole range of drama, music, corporate and school events… no doubt there’s a fair smattering of Gilbert & Sullivan. Not so long ago they got some dough (from the Arts NSW, State Government Regional Capital Program) and commissioned a new d&b PA. “The grant allowed us to choose a system that not only met but exceeded all of our selection criteria, as well as acquiring equipment that would provide numerous benefits to us in the longer term, in comparison with some other proposed options.

Guiding our decision were the many positive recommendations from other venues who had recently installed d&b systems,” said Chris King, Arts and Culture Coordinator for Gosford City Council. “d&b audiotechnik had the most flexible system with the best quality of sound and coverage for our venue,” acknowledges King.

“Another important factor in our decision was that d&b audiotechnik is also one of the few manufacturers specified at the top of most technical riders we receive for touring shows.

A d&b audiotechnik installation meant we had a system that would meet all expectations and requirements of touring shows and engineers.”

The chosen system was based on the Q-Series.

L/R arrays either side of the proscenium include a Qi-Sub, with the low end further supported by B2-Subs ground stacked under each array. Extra Qi10s are rigged to provide enhanced centre vocal localisation for drama, musicals and film presentations, while several 8S loudspeakers from the xS-Series cover front fill duties. M6 monitors were chosen for onstage foldback, driven by a D6 amplifier, with the specific intention to redeploy them to the Theatre’s smaller, multi-purpose, Don Craig Room, to create an additional sound reinforcement system in this very intimate space.

Australian Distributors for d&b, National Audio Systems, handled the design (Dave Jacques

leading the charge) with Cuepoint Productions taking care of the install.

One of the main challenges faced by Cuepoint was locating a suitable rigging point for the main arrays. After consultation with Gosford City Council Engineers, a wall-mounted rigging frame was custom designed and manufactured

by Cuepoint to be bolted onto the double brick wall either side of the proscenium arch. As King remarks, “Great thinking outside the square!

Cuepoint went above and beyond to make sure we had a safe and secure rigging solution for the arrays. They had the system installed and NAS had it commissioned well ahead of schedule and under budget.”

“The main aim of this project was to improve our services to artists, performers and audiences,” concludes King. “Previous to this installation, most touring productions needed to sub hire extra audio equipment which added extra cost and subsequent accessibility issues for budget conscious productions. The first use of the new system was a touring dramatic production of Orwell’s ‘1984’ which involved a highly dynamic sound design which showcased the range of the system. Next up was a highly respected Led Zeppelin celebration concert performed by a group of top Australian musicians and singers that tested the system to its very limits. The system passed with flying colours on both occasions with many compliments received from touring technicians and engineers as well as audience members, a number of whom are regular patrons of our venue. Since then we have received many comments about the improvement in sound quality and enjoyment in the venue from both audiences and performers. There is a definite sense of ease displayed by performers when they walk on stage and see a d&b audiotechnik monitor speaker in front of them!”

National Audio Systems: 1800 441 440 or www.nationalaudio.com.au d&b audiotechnik: www.dbaudio.com Cuepoint Productions: (02) 8006 1486 or www.cuepoint.com.au

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FOR LEADERS AND PROFESSIONALS IN AV AND SYSTEMS INTEGRATION

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NEWS

Integrate Education Leads With Telstra Store Signage 25-27 AUGUST 2015 MELBOURNE CONVENTION & EXHIBITION CENTRE

T

elstra will discuss the strategy behind its impressive new centrepiece and AV system at its George Street Sydney store, plus the benefits of digital integration to enhance the customer experience at this year’s Integrate Speaker Series, held at Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre from August 25 to August 27.

Speaking on day one of the seminar series as part of the ‘Digital Screens and Signage Stream’ supported by Engagis, Telstra General Manager of Retail Technology Innovation Joy Marrocco will delve into how Telstra is harnessing the power of digital signage and AV systems in its stores to create more engaging connections with customers in her seminar, “The Connected Retailer – How Technology is Connecting Customers and Brands”.

The digital signage market experienced a growth of 12.1 per cent in 2014 and is predicted to be worth $133 million by 2020 as businesses across several industries increasingly recognise the benefits of integrating digital signage with business operations.

Ms Marrocco said the explosive growth of digital mobile technology had changed the landscape of consumer engagement and created multiple touch points that brands could use to engage with consumers.

“Our George Street store is a great example of what can happen when you harness new technology and integrate it with all aspects of the customer experience to enhance conversation with the customer, rather than replace it,” Ms Marrocco said.

“The right technical foundations, such as good quality digital screens and equipment, have enabled Telstra to future-proof the AV system and allows us to change how we use it with our evolving business priorities.”

The George Street store now experiences three times the foot traffic of its regular stores, while sales are nearly twice the target, making Telstra’s new format retail and digital integration a success.

Integrate Event Manager Soren Norgaard said the Integrate Speaker Series would bring together some of the AV industry’s leading experts and recent case studies to share information and knowledge throughout the industry as well as incorporate the InfoComm and CEDIA training sessions.

“The digital signage industry is rapidly

changing as businesses begin to see the many ways in which fully integrated AV solutions can enhance the customer experience and ultimately lead to stronger customer engagement,” Mr Norgaard said.

“The Integrate Speaker Series is an opportunity for anyone looking to implement new AV systems within their business to understand current best practice and benefits of an integrated system, but also for AV installers and product distributors to better understand what businesses are doing in terms of AV systems and how they can tap in to that to provide better services.”

Sessions at this year’s Integrate will focus on digital screens and signage, unified communication and collaboration and smart building technology. Leading companies will host sessions to discuss how they are using the latest in AV technology to integrate with business processes to create more efficient operations.

Sessions are available from $32. For the full Speaker Series schedule or for more information on the InfoComm and CEDIA training sessions visit: integrate-expo.com/seminars To secure your free entry to the Integrate 2015 show floor visit integrate-expo.com. 

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022

FEATURE

Photo: Destination NSW

Bright Night Out Large-scale pixel-mapped projections may not be big news anymore, but some Vivid exhibits continue to push the technology boundaries.

Text:/ Jen Temm

S

ydney showed its technicolour form with its annual Vivid event clocking up a record 17 million visitors willing to brave the chilly evenings and traffic chaos to check out the 18-day, Instagramfriendly festival of light-art, installations and grand-scale projection through May and June.

The figures – a 20 percent increase in visitors from last year, including some 36,500 travel packages sold to overseas and interstate tourists (and 11,000 to China alone) must be warming the collective heart of state tourism and events body Destination NSW, which launched the show as a way to boost businesses during the slower winter months. It claims the event is now the biggest of its kind in the world, stretching out to include new precincts in Central Park and suburban Chatswood in additional to the usual CBD locations.

This year more than 80 light installations were created by 225 artists from 21 countries, with the Vivid Ideas program drawing some 500 speakers in more than 150 events, and 70 bands performing as part of the Vivid music program with 382 musos, 232 DJs and 1502 hours of programmed music.

FEATURE

023

TRANSCENDING TRAGEDY

SAILING SYDNEY HARBOUR

The striking centrepiece of Vivid in Martin Place was designed to cast light in a space associated with tragedy following the Lindt Café seige in December.

Transcendence, designed by Sydney-based new media artist and Finely Tuned director Joe Crossley, combined projection-mapping with code-driven light shows on three-storey high bamboo scaffolding covered with screens – which doubled as pop-up hawkers’ food bazaar.

The visuals were a collaboration between Crossley and a roster of artists from Australia, New York and the UK, using 10 Epson projectors from a homemade media server using Resolume software, with Mad Mapper video mapping software for the ‘bamboo mapping’. Such was its success, the project led to Epson sponsoring both Crossley and Transcendence.

His equipment requirements were very specific: “I wanted very bright, sharp, vivid, large venue projectors that were easy to set up and adjust to get the exact look and effect I was after. Having looked at other projectors on the market it became clear that the best ones for this installation were the Epson G and Z Series. The colours these projectors produce are way brighter than any other projector I’ve seen. The keystone correction was amazing and really allows you to get exactly what you want.

“Transcendence was a complex installation and the fact that we could move the images remotely and that they would morph the way we wanted them to was a massive plus. It also means we could manipulate the images and use every centimeter of surface space without losing a single pixel.

“The Epson projectors have quick corners, meaning we can quickly line up the images and adjust them remotely. In an installation such as Transcendence it’s all about the brightness of the projectors and the Epson projectors really delivered here. They also excelled in the luminosity of every colour and just knowing you always have those 5000 lumens is amazing.” (Photo: Joe Crossley at the Transcendence installation in Martin Place, Sydney) Joe Crossley: joecrossley.com Finely Tuned (Producer): finelytuned.com.au Epson: www.epson.com.au

Lighting the sails of the Sydney Opera House is undoubtedly the highlight of Vivid Sydney. For this year’s event, Vivid Live curator Ben Marshall invited multi-disciplinary UK design studio Universal Everything to create the projection content. Marshall further curated a fascinating collection of digital artworks within the venue, and The Electric Canvas was called in to provide the projection overlay and equipment specification, plus the technical supply and delivery of both installations.

Universal Everything collaborated with more than 20 animation studios from around the world to light up the Opera House, each of whom brought their own aesthetic to the project. Each was given a keyword as a prompt – ricochet, swarm, grow, bounce, climb and burst, for example – and tasked with creating 30-second-long cell animations. The idea was to produce a living mural, drawing on inspiration ranging from Roman engravings to modern street art, and the hand-drawn animations helped distinguish the project from some of the more high-tech projections of previous years.

The Opera House’s Western Foyer was transformed into an immersive gallery space for the first time to house Universal Everything’s digital artworks.

The foyer’s six window booths and northern and southern walls were used as projection canvases, as was the ceiling above the main box office staircase. It was essential that the installation be neat and unobtrusive, but also deliver the light power required to create great visual impact. The Electric Canvas chose its solid-state laser phosphor Christie projectors for the Western Foyer windows. Highpower DLP technology was deployed to project the works on the northern and southern walls, as well as above the box office stairs. The Electric Canvas also provided audio interfaces to deliver the accompanying soundscapes for two of the works, which complemented the immersive experience for the public. (Photo by Daniel Boud, courtesy of Sydney Opera House.)

Universal Everything: www.universaleverything.com The Electric Canvas: www.theelectriccanvas.com.au Christie: www.christiedigital.com

024

FEATURE

Photos courtesy of Holly and sponsor Qantas

TAKING FLIGHT Part of Vivid’s Light Walk, Space Folding by digital agency Holly’s Zina Kaye, was a towering walk-in cylinder that morphed into multi-coloured patterns of light and sound in response to real-time flight data from Sydney airspace. The installation mapped the progress of planes flying in and out of the airport, allowing audiences to follow their progress through the rhythmic movements of colour and data racing around the structure, with headsets to hear the datadriven generated soundtrack.

The 3m tower was wrapped with more than 1600 LEDs with custom-built software to translate the live flight data into unique patterns of light and sound, prompting questions and discussions about place, transformation and the interconnected nature of our world — well, if you’re a beret and cravat wearer at least. As explained by Holly producer Danielle Wiessner, it offered arguably a unique convergence of light and sound, in the way that it combined live flight data, new code technologies, an audio streaming service, game sound design principles and immersive audio technologies: “In the end, we were able to create an extraordinarily immersive auditory experience, utilising an array of sophisticated techniques that at the same time provided a sense of narrative, emotion, evolution and energy for both the light sculpture and the audience to engage with,” she said.

The musical work was broken down into a series of assets that were manipulated and orchestrated via MaxMSP interactive installation software, Wiessner explained, and programmed using audio coding

technology more commonly seen in large-scale video game titles to synchronise it to the data set, which in turn synchronised with the light sculpture.

In total, 1168 individual sound assets were recorded, edited, designed and implemented into a customised audio system using MaxMSP. Recording the raw audio was done over two days at Linear Studios and featured musicians including Sydney’s highly regarded Jared Underwood and Llew Kiek. Dozens of instruments recorded note by note so they could be selectively triggered by the lights, among them ancient Arabic and Mediterranean stringed instruments, African djembe, Asian singing bowls, traditional western instruments including piano and glockenspiel.

“Importantly, the recordings were made using a process known as ‘binaural’, which recreates the responses of the human ears when positioning sound in a three-dimensional space,” Wiessner said. “As the musicians played each note they changed their position in relation to the microphone.

As the sounds are randomly selected they appear to change position around the listener. The realism of this spatial positioning technique creates a heightened experience that, in the resulting work, was both natural and otherworldly.”

Holly: www.hol.ly

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026

FEATURE

TDC EYE-WATERING STATS • Video projection used 7,464,960,000 total pixels on to the famous architecture of 10 buildings across Sydney.

• 8976sqm of architecturally mapped video projection.

• A total of 2,000,000 ANSI lumens used.

• 1.8km of 3-phase power cable, and 2.5km of fibre optic cable.

Technical Direction Company: www.tdc.com.au Ample Projects: www.ampleprojects.com.au Spinifex Group: www.spinifexgroup.com Danny Rose: www.dannyrose.fr The Propaganda Mill: www.thepropagandamill.com

TDC TOOLS UP

MAKING THE CUT

Technical Direction Company provided Vivid with video expertise in mapping techniques and key video technology across an unprecedented 10km distance as the 18-day festival expanded into new Chatswood and Central Park precincts.

For its fourth year of involvement with the event, TDC delivered more than 70 high-resolution projectors, four types of media servers as well as technical infrastructure including two automation platforms, each with custom hardware and electronics to power the video projections. Additional challenges included crane lifts, street closures for installs and six new sites to manage.

“As well as site-specific challenges, we had to overcome reflective surfaces such as glass from other buildings or water,” explains head technician and media specialist Steve Cain. “It was a challenge to converge multiple projectors onto curved roofs, perform colour correction onto dark bricks and colour balancing of multiple projector models to match these evenly. Seeing the final result with people interacting with projections is a real reward.”

“Vivid Sydney requires careful planning by skilled staff including design and mappings of the buildings to enable artists and designers to plan their animations,” added technical manager Olin Winton. “The artists we have teamed up with this year have made this process simple and enjoyable.”

Life Story (left): New to Vivid, a projection onto the Argyle Cut showing BBC Earth’s Life Story TV series. The BBC worked with Spinifex Group to bring this project to life.

Sueann Parker, Production Manager at Spinifex Group noted that extensive testing was required in the lead up. “Neither Spinifex nor TDC had projected at this site previously. As a result TDC required warped test footage months prior to the launch so as to best assess the split of the eight projectors inside the tunnel. Our animation was then created based on the mask they supplied. Months in the making it all lined up perfectly."

MUSEUM OF COLOUR ASSEMBLAGE Mechanised Colour Assemblage (above): transformed the Museum of Contemporary Art façade into a series of sound and colour ‘machines’. TDC provided ultrahigh resolution projectors and media servers for artwork created by Sydney artist Rebecca Baumann and Parisbased art and design collective Danny Rose. “TDC supplied powerful video projectors to show our 8K resolution media for our 3D-mapped experience. The final result was a splendid video projection where the audience could walk right up to the façade and see the artistic detail at very close range,” says Sergio Carrubba, managing director and founder at Danny Rose. (Photos courtesy of TDC)

Š 2015 Christie Digital Systems USA, Inc. All rights reserved.

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028

FEATURE

Opera House Curtain Call David Claringbold has been instrumental in the rise and rise of the Sydney Opera House as a technical and cultural icon as much as it is a architectural one. Here he recalls some highlights of two decades in The House.

Text:/ David Claringbold

FEATURE

T

he Sydney Opera House has an enviable reputation for excellence in the performing arts. World-class facilities, highly skilled technical staff, and a willingness to test the limits in pursuit of being leaders rather than followers. What’s easy to forget is that not so long ago, the Opera House was a place no one wanted to perform at; full of staff who’d rather be somewhere else, working with outdated or unsuitable gear. Turning around the fortunes of The House required a huge culture shift and some big-time capital expenditure — a team effort in other words. But undoubtedly there’s one man who must take the most credit for the Opera House’s well-earned and hard-won reputation and that’s David Claringbold.

David Claringbold has recently announced his resignation after spending some 20 years working at the Sydney Opera House, most recently as Director of Theatre & Events, responsible for over 500 staff, a significant amount of the programmed content, tens of millions of dollars in business and just about everything that moves on Bennelong Point.

Typical of his tenure at the Opera House his resignation comes with little fanfare and certainly no bad blood. “Now’s a good time to move on and to really think differently about the future. Not that I’m bored or unhappy where I am but there’s a time when you have to acknowledge you’ve put together the thing you wanted to put together and you have a great team that functions at a high level, built on an incredible technology base.”

His story is the story of the Opera House’s rise from technical basketcase to world leader. This issue we’ve paid David the courtesy of allowing him to tell his story entirely in his own words.

1990: THE WAY BACK MACHINE

David Claringbold: I first came to the Opera House in 1990 as a Casual Sound Desk Operator Grade 3. I’d come from a club and pub live sound background as well as working in the better recording studios around town, producing artists I’d got to know by doing live gigs.

Sounds terrible to say, but when I was first working there, I didn’t really give a shit. The reason?

No one else did. I was shocked to see how bad things were technically from a sound perspective.

At that point it was all about the lighting and staging and the Opera House was focussed on the classical art form. The sound department had a bit of gear but certainly no systems.

When I left in 1993 I swore I’d never return.

But I did. In 1996 I took on the role of Concert Hall Audio Supervisor. I recall that as I was taking part in meetings and conversations at that time, I had a choice to make: either I was a

part of the problem or I was going to be part of the solution.

AND THE WINNER IS… SYDNEY

The turning point was around the time the announcement came that Sydney won the Olympics and a new chief executive was installed, Michael Lynch.

I built a good working relationship with Michael so when he shared his vision for the Opera House as being a creative organisation, I was able to be blunt with him: “You’d better think again.” When he asked why, I told him that there were no systems; no capabilities from a technical or human standpoint to deliver on that sort of artistic vision. I’ll never forget his response: “Well I know we spent enough money on the f**king concrete. What do we need to do?” That was the start of a new beginning.

I bought eight Meyer MSL4s, a couple of subs and a multicore. It doesn’t sound like much but Michael Lynch was showing some faith in me.

We chose the Meyer PA because they were selfpowered as well as industry standard. One of the earliest gigs we did in the forecourt was Buena Vista Social Club. And it energised the crew and the sound department; it showed we were capable of staging events and opening the Opera House to a new audience.

FIXING THE CONCERT HALL

There have been many big technical investments over the years, but one of the highest profile was the upgrade of the concert hall in 2009.

When I took on the position of Technical Director in 2006, getting the concert hall ‘fixed’ was a high priority. It was beyond belief that we were reinventing the wheel in that venue every day — pulling down complex lighting and audio rigs all the time. It was crazy.

I remember sitting in a meeting with a previous technical director and saying: we need a proper sound system in the concert hall, we need to carpet the hall and we need to put up acoustic drapes because it’s damaging the presentation of the venue. He just thumped the table and shouted, “No one’s going to pay for that!”. Which was just blinkered thinking because the Opera House brand was already paying — no one wanted to play there; no one wanted to go there.

Our artistic vision was to present the best artists in the world in the best venue in the world.

And the technical department had a part to play in that. Choosing a new PA for the concert hall meant undergoing an intensive period of evaluation.

Shootouts are intriguing scenarios. It was really important we showed every supplier the goodwill of inviting them in or at least giving them the opportunity to compete — to come in

029

“ there will be people over the years who will bitch about the decisions we’ve made, but it’s always been about making the right decision for the venue and the crew who are using the equipment” and have their day. We engaged Bruce Jackson as an independent ‘arbiter’ as well, knowing how sensitive the process would be.

There had to be a winner and that was d&b with J series main hangs, along with its Q and T series covering the rest of the hall. And that was a big part of d&b’s success: back when I first heard d&b, prior to it taking off in Australia, it was a real eye-opener. The sonic signature was just so consistent across the range, and that’s what impressed me most. Then in the shootouts, the way that system rigged and the measurements we got from it, well, it made us think, “This is something special”.

Did we put some noses out of joint? Of course, but I’ve got to think about the venue and what’s best for it at that time, and think about how the system dovetails with what we’re trying to achieve and the artistic aims of the Opera House.

In fact, I’ve been really determined we don’t appear to be a closed shop to any one brand or any one integrator.

Obviously there will be people over the years who will bitch about the decisions we’ve made, but it’s always been about making the right decision for the venue and the crew who are using the equipment.

FIXING THE CULTURE

When I returned to the Sydney Opera House as Technical Director in 2006, I shared senior management’s ambitions for the Opera House brand: ie. to be something contemporary, accessible and something that provided program for all types of people. But our own culture was holding us back from delivering that.

The Studio when it opened was the first venue we could truly call our own — we could invite artists and ask them what they would like

030

“I know we've spent enough money on the f**king concrete.

What do we need to do?” That was the start of a new beginning to do. Trouble was, the culture at the time was almost militaristic. It was all about getting those lighting plots, rigging plots, and sound plots and delivering those plots to the letter. The new world was about an artist turning up, creating new work in the venue and our technical crew adapting and responding. It was going to require a huge cultural shift.

There were some quite fierce standoffs in that period. I needed the staff to know that I was in charge and I needed the customer to know that I was there for them; that we were there for them.

The Sydney Opera House had just become so insular that it was all about our work conditions and it was all about our penalty rates or whatever it was — all important parts of how a venue works but you don’t rub it in a client’s face.

It brought home the fact that, technically, we were a bit behind but culturally we were a long way behind. I knew then, that to get the funding to deliver the vision I had for The House, I would first need to address the human element of the equation.

JUST DELIVER THE GIGS

One of the most significant changes was moving all the supervisors off a rostered, hourly wage regime, and putting them on a fixed annual salary. The message was clear: just deliver the gigs. There’s a lot of trust in that and it took them a while to get it: ‘we trust you and we want you to deliver the services as best you can’.

We also introduced new contractual arrangements that fitted in with the seasonal ebb and flow of the activity of the Opera House. We allowed casuals sick leave, recreational leave…

I fought hard for those things, but without an understanding of what the crew needs in their lives how can you get anywhere? You can’t. Yes, I did go quite hard at management but I knew the staff on the floor were looking for leadership and I was there to give it to them.

The result was a better culture and better people. After all, if we didn’t have the right people with the right attitude, with the right skills, in the right structure, any new technology would be redundant. If we didn’t have technology that aligned with the corporate strategy of the business; the technology would be redundant.

Those things are inextricably linked.

FEATURE

GETTING TECH ON THE TABLE

To put technology investment on the table as a priority in an organisation, any organisation, you first must understand the brand values of that organisation. Get hold of the strategic plan.

Download the corporate or department business plan and use their words ‘against them’. “If our brand values are XYZ then our substandard sound or lighting or staging is not living up to the brand values of the organisation, and we will not deliver on the strategic plan.” You need to look higher, from a strategic perspective, than ‘please may I have a new toy’.

At times I’ve even said, “no, we don’t need the money for that gear right now, please buy the new carpet”, for example. Showing you’re part of the team and that you can see what’s right for the business as a whole at that time, will count in your favour.

Put together a three- to five-year plan. Show that you’ve thought about the future not just from a procurement perspective but from a maintenance, skills and training perspective.

Other times you just have to be plane sneaky.

I recall, around the turn of the millennium, that we would inevitably need to retire our TAC SR-9000 analogue consoles and move to digital.

This was around the time Yamaha had launched the PM1D and Euphonix was launching the System 5. In anticipation, I knew we needed to run fibre throughout the venue. It would be an 18-month job. I snuck it past the bean counters by calling it ‘multicore’ in the budget — I didn’t actually mention the word ‘fibre’ for fear of the IT department having a meltdown. When questions were asked… “Oh yeah, that’s the multicore.” So it was kinda done by deception at first, which is funny given the way we now integrate with IT from a network design philosophy — it’s like night and day.

DANTE ENTERPRISE

Mentioning the IT department, I recall using Dante for the first time for the world premier of the reboot of Star Trek in the concert hall. That was pretty out there — I’m not sure we were quite ready for that. We were using Dante to come from the projectors at the back of the hall to the Dolby Lake processors which would then feed the d&b amplifiers.

Intriguingly, it was first time we’d ever got the sound guys and the IT guys in the same room at the same time talking to each other about the way things needed to function. ‘I didn’t know you guys needed to do that,’ and vice versa. After some groundwork we had network switches set up the right way and the data packets flowing correctly.

The cast were in the ante room about to be presented to the premier audience —Paramount Pictures had flown everyone out to the Opera House for the occasion. At that moment someone from back of stage approached me with the news: “we’ve lost half of the PA”. It

felt like the blood had drained from of my body.

I went back stage convinced it was the new audio-over-IP system, Dante, at fault. Back stage, rather than being met by a familiar audio department face, I was confronted by an IT guy with a laptop. Being IT, he was about to power cycle the whole system, which would have been a disaster. Thankfully Jeremy Christian, who’s now the Head of Sound at the Opera House, appeared at that very moment and said “Don’t touch a thing!”. In two minutes we ascertained it was actually a power distribution board that had gone down.

A quick reboot and we were back.

PICKING PARTNERS

I’ve never been so close to heart failure in my life. I was convinced it must have been the leading-edge tech that was the problem. No, the old tech was.

So the question is: how do you take these technical leaps of faith? You take them with good partners and not with people without a track record.

Stagetec is a good example. It’s a company that’s done a lot of work with us on the new stage management systems and have an incredible track record for design and engineering and integration. We pushed them around the innovation we required for that project. They didn’t quite have all the things that we wanted but after discussions with their R&D we knew we were with good partners.

I think that’s the key, dealing with the right people long term, even if it took us just a bit longer to bring the product to commissioning stage. That investment in them was well worth it. I’m glad we just didn’t go with an off-the-peg solution that was ‘near enough’. Sometimes you have to take a future view.

PART OF SOMETHING BIGGER

The Sydney Opera House is now known as a place of technical excellence. A far cry from when I first darkened the doors in the early ’90s.

To achieve that, you’ve got to start at the top.

Everyone in the business has got to be living those values.

People who work in technical roles in the entertainment industries are all highly selfmotivated, but you need to connect them into something bigger than “we’re going to do the gig right”. After all, you’re sometimes asking them to work extraordinary hours, hours that make no sense when you draft it out in preparation.

You really want to plug into the motivation and the passion people have when they get into this business in the first place.

For me, it was about instilling the notion that “we’re part of something bigger”. That we were bringing new audiences and new artists to the Opera House, that we were changing perceptions, and how everyone in the technical teams were crucial in delivering that. 

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FEATURE

Ahead of The Games Large scale games ceremonies require a large-scale Australian tech contingent.

Text:/ Jen Temm Images:/ Auditoria

Best Seat in The House: Richard Sharratt presides over the Ceremonies' mix poisition, at the presumptuously named Olympic Stadium.

FEATURE

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“ we launched the whole stadium into a spiral pattern with everything colliding, using the screens … much like the Hadron collider ” The lighting was a Clay Paky love-in: 437 units of Clay Paky Sharpy Wash 330, 66 Sharpy and 174 Mythos. Mythos on the field of play and lining the top of the stadium, with Sharpy and Sharpy Wash 330 filling in every level in between. (Photo: Ralph Larmann.)

T

he inaugural European Games in June barely registered on the sporting calendar in this part of the world but Australia had a podium position in production, with a solid contingent flying in to Baku to join the 350 staff and 1000 crew drawn from 28 countries to run the services behind the scenes. Figuring highly behind the scenes were Australia companies, Auditoria, Artists in Motion and The P.A. People.

No expense was spared on the spectacle, which drew close to 6000 athletes from 50 European countries. The official, and arguably conservative, cost to the oil-rich host country Azerbaijan was close to A$1.5 billion, with many of the 18 sports venues purpose-built, including the Olympic Stadium used for the opening and closing ceremonies. The two-hour opener alone cost A$95 million, putting it well on par with Olympic Games ceremonies.

Audio director for the extravagant opening and closing ceremonies was Auditoria’s Scott Willsallen, no stranger to the world’s biggest sports events with multiple Olympic and Commonwealth Games Ceremonies design and direction credits since 2003. Scott spent two and a half months in the Azerbaijani capital on the project, bringing with him the same team from the Winter Olympics last year in Sochi: systems engineer Justin Arthur, relay operators Steve Logan and Luis Miranda, FOH engineer Richard Sharratt, and broadcast mix engineers Andy Rose, Griff Hewis.

WELL GROUNDED

Like Sochi, L-Acoustics K2 loudspeakers and SB28 subs dominated the truckloads of audio gear from suppler Agora in Italy. But getting the coverage needed for a 68,000-capacity, 65m-high, six-storey stadium primarily from the ground took some design nous.

“Don’t underestimate a ground stack!” Scott told us on his recent return home. “In London we put 220 V-DOSC up the air, Sochi we put 150odd K2 in the air. This time around we didn’t have

that luxury – the structure of the stadium didn’t really allow for it and the available live load in the roof was all used up with lighting fixtures, so probably three-quarters of the audience was covered from ground stacks.

“Obviously with a ground stack into a stadium the vertical envelope you try and cover is actually pretty narrow, so one degree makes a significantly bigger difference than a one degree difference makes in a flown situation. We had about four tuning sessions, playing with angles, just to determine which was the most appropriate angle set.”

DRY ORCHESTRAL

A key part of Scott’s role was working with the music team on the content, to ensure it worked for both the stadium and for broadcast on the official YouTube channel of the games. Program material for the opening and closing ceremonies was primarily replay, with some live content including a live performance of John Lennon’s Imagine by Lady Gaga.

“We spent a lot of time with the music team educating them in how things sound in a big stadium environment, in making sure that what we’re creating and how we’re capturing it in the studio will work to deliver us the right sound we need in the stadium and for broadcast,” Scott said.

Ensuring clarity in the massive venue also required an unconventional approach: “Stadiums aren’t exactly the most anechoic environment around. So to replay orchestral music you need more than a Decca tree recording, you need close-miked ‘stems’ of orchestral sections that are then combined with the room mics to fatten the sound out if needed or strip it back to the dry recordings for maximum clarity. That flexibility meant the stems we used for broadcast were a completely different set of stems to the ones we used live in the house – the ones we used in the house were much drier; much more isolated to each instrument.”

AV OPTIONS

Creative agency Artists In Motion provided the audiovisual content for the ceremonies. Like Auditoria, the Sydney-based team had plenty of experience with Olympic-scale events but head of creative Richard Lindsay said these games were one of their toughest gigs, and the most significant: “It was the first of its kind, the first European Games, and we realised the importance of what it meant to Baku and Azerbaijan.”

AIM was initially engaged for the opening ceremony, with another 45 minutes of content added for the closer some nine days before delivery. The team began working on previsuals with opening ceremony artistic director Dimitris Papaioannou and show producer FiveCurrents at the beginning of the year – this had to be approved by Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev and first lady Mehriban Aliyeva, and became the blueprint for the show.

“You will never find a brief written down, it was basically a relationship between Dimitris and myself,” Richard said. “We did it all verbally and we would go away and interpret the ideas he had. He’s an interesting guy to work with – he doesn’t like to restrict himself to one option, so we ended up doing a lot of options which we wouldn’t normally do, especially given the little amount of time that we had. We never stopped trying different things until there was no more time left, literally – even the day of the ceremony there were a couple of minor changes.”

STITCHED UP

But with few large projection surfaces and builtin systems (that weren’t designed for large shows or to work together), it was a technical challenge as well: “We didn’t have a lot of big single image areas, it was a lot of components that we had to stitch together to make work. We had to provide different effects and images throughout the whole show so that was interesting because all of this stuff had been installed and nobody actually knew how to use the systems, so there

034

FEATURE

Ceremonies’ sound (below) was largely taken care of by ground-stacked L-Acoustics K2 and SB28 subs. (This image) Audio nerve centre and patch room with Justin Arthur (Audio Technical Manager, Auditoria) maintaining a watchful eye.

MEDIUMS COLLIDE

was a whole learning curve as you can imagine.”

The level of ambient light meant projectors weren’t an option, so the team put together existing stadium screens, LED boards and flooring, a LED ring running around the stadium interior, and LED pillows cladding the outside of the stadium along with lasers and costume LEDs on the performers to deliver hours of cohesive content.

“We had to do a certain amount of testing that we could then use as our benchmark for each of these different mediums, to understand how they’d all work together, using systems built into the stadium that were not designed to use in show mode, to be cued timecodewise with all the other different mediums.

Technically it was a tough one, to get it all to work at the same time.”

One of the highlights for AIM was the ‘welcome and good luck’ video message to the athletes from CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research and the home of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

“We produced this video that welcomed the athletes and explained what CERN is to the audience and then we launched the whole stadium into a spiral pattern with everything colliding, using the screens outside of the stadium, the inside screens, the field of play with some laser – we created a feeling that the whole stadium was winding up and getting faster and faster, much like the Hadron collider would do.

It was almost a strobe effect in the end as it got faster, and that launched into a pyro display as well,” Richard said.

“That routine set the tone for the rest of the ceremony: it combined a lot of different mediums, it was a short and powerful moment, and being purely digitally based, it had no cast. That was a unique part of the show for us.”

BAKU COMMS

The P.A. People won the contract to provide ceremonies comms, deploying three 40-foot containers worth of two-way radios, intercom and CCTV, and technical services with 22 crew. “The scale of the project was pretty remarkable,” said Chris Dodds, managing director of The P.A. People.

“In many ways it was a bigger undertaking than Sochi. The other particularly notable aspect of the project was the use of the Clear-Com FreeSpeak II [DECT-based wireless communications] system

to cater to the moving stage. The production crew did not include full duplex on the original specification, but as the artistic component of the event developed – and after we had been appointed as contractor – it was determined that a full duplex solution would constitute a significant advantage for the ceremonies.”

Ultimately, the call was for a capacity of 80plus packs to be put in place. With 50 or so packs generally constituting the maximum for a singlelocation FreeSpeak II deployment, The P.A. People designed a configuration “using two systems in two different frequency bands, and with the support of the Azerbaijani authorities we were able to operate one system in one local license band and the other outside of that. With the two systems colocated, we could achieve the desired 80 packs in one physical RF space to the satisfaction of all. It was a great achievement,” Chris said.

Ted Wells, Senior Lighting Designer for Full Flood, concurs: “The Comms system was phenomenal. We had 26 positions for followspots around the stadium and had no problems understanding or communicating; no static, no buzz. For us, this is the difference between a good show and a great show.”

Other elements of the moving stage comms specification included an Eclipse HX Median digital matrix platform, nine HelixNet master stations and 70 HelixNet beltpacks. Comms for general main stadium use included two Eclipse HX-Omega digital matrix systems and more than 200 IP-enabled intercom panels. Additional ClearCom V-Series intercom panels were also used in the rehearsal tent and remote cauldron areas. 

FEATURE

GAMES STATS 2,000+ lighting fixtures 12,000+ ear pieces and 180,000+ recycled batteries used by cast and crew 250m of aerial lines across the stadium with 7.5 t capacity 110km power cables and12MW of generator power 800 speakers and 25km of cabling for the sound system 500+ truck loads of freight and 100 tons of airfreight from 20 countries 20.5 million man hours spent building the stadium 450sqm of LED floor tiles used on three stages 10,000 pyrotechnics OPENING CEREMONY Artistic Director: Dimitris Panaionnou Music Directors: Teodor Currentzis, Vangelino Currentzis Production Designers: Thanassis Demiris, Eva Manidaki Senior Technical Director: Nick Eltis Audio Designer: Scott Willsallen Lighting Designer: Robert Dickinson Pyrotechnic Designer: Eric Tucker CLOSING CEREMONY Artistic Director: James Hadley Creative Director: Libby Hyland Music Director: Christian Steinhauser Production Designer: Josh Zangen Senior Technical Director: Nick Eltis Audio Designer: Scott Willsallen Lighting Designer: Robert Dickinson Pyrotechnic Designer: Eric Tucker

MORE INFORMATION: Auditoria: www.auditoria.systems Artists in Motion: www.artistsinmotion.co The P.A. People: www.papeople.com.au FiveCurrents (Ceremony Production): fivecurrents.com Agora (Audio Equipment Supplier): www.agoraaq.it Production Resource Group (Lighting Supplier): www.prg.com Creative Technology (AV Equipment Supplier): www.ct-group.com Full Flood (Lighting Design): www.fullflood.com Baku 2015 European Games: www.baku2015.com

035

Steve Logan (front) and Luis Miranda enjoy the panaromic (Fairlight) views of the replay room.

The comms control room (picture courtesy of The P.A. People)

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FEATURE

In The Trenches Nothing ‘over the top’ about the travelling AV of the WW1 Centenary Exhibition.

Text:/ Christopher Holder

FEATURE

A

s 100-year anniversaries tick over, World War 1 is never far from our thoughts, and our museums. Last issue we paid a visit to the Australian War Memorial’s First World War exhibition, this issue we visit The WW1 Centenary Exhibition currently being shown at Museum Victoria, which is similar… but different – similar for its reliance on cutting edge AV, and different because it’s a travelling exhibition, and the equipment choices reflect that. That said, don’t get the idea that ‘travelling’ entails circus tents and an entourage of semitrailers, there’s nothing about this exhibition that looks temporary. Next stop is North America in October.

The WW1 Centenary Exhibition is based on some 350 significant historical artefacts from the WW1 collections of Imperial War Museums (IWM) in London. The special collection of artefacts, ranging from large-scale artillery machines to intricate personal objects, are featured alongside state-of-the-art immersive digital technology.

IEC Exhibitions is responsible for taking the pieces to the world and translating the London Imperial War Museum permanent WW1 exhibition into something that can effectively flat pack ’n’ rack into a container. In so doing, IEC worked with the IWM’ s exhibition designer Casson Mann, sound designer Idee and Klang, and local content creators and illustrators/ animators.

AV spoke to the exhibition’s Project Manager Ki McGinity about the technical and creative decisions he made to keep the show on the road.

We last spoke to Ki in 2012 when he was with Grande Exhibitions, which was touring an AVheavy Van Gogh show. It’s fascinating to hear how his specialised world has changed quite radically in around three years, especially with the advent of HDBaseT. TOURING PACKAGE

Ki McGinity: “For this exhibition we took what the Imperial War Museum had done in its permanent gallery and made a touring evaluation of it. We had to find an AV solution that could travel the world: equipment that would be low maintenance, keeps ticking away from a hardware perspective; and something that we could do on a budget.

“With touring, the biggest factor is technical support – you don’t necessarily have that daily onsite oversight – so the AV has got to be reliable and robust. For example, the London IWM has an interactive display based on a line of kinetic cameras with multiple in-line sensors. That was immediately out of the question to tour because it would require a technician to tweak it every day. But if we could turn that idea into something

based on a touchscreen we might do that instead, and re-author the content with the original developers and format the software to be output on 42-inch touchscreens.

“Touring an AV show means being careful with how you do it from a logistics point of view. You ask yourself: ‘What’s going to make it quick?’, What’s going to make it reproducable?’, and Watchout is key to all that. I couldn’t recommend the product more highly for multidisplay output. Admittedly, I’m biased, I’ve been working with it for so long. But its power and bang for buck is unmatched in my view.

“The new release version of Watchout 6 is impressive. It has some really good mapping features, some really good dynamic HTML5 display features to run dynamic content. I’m looking forward to seeing what it’s capable of.”

I HEART HDBASE-T

Ki McGinity: “Most of what you see here is done over HDBaseT, which has been a great technology for us. I really, really love it.

“Having HDBaseT’s video, audio, control and power over one cable has made my life a lot easier. Back in the days of the last Van Gogh show, we were using Gefen SDI extenders.

We had 40 projectors and 120 network cables running to them. Actually it was more like 160 cables – three to each projector and a redundant spare. It took us seven days to lay it out!

“It was one of the main reasons for choosing the 17 Epson G Series projectors, because of the onboard HDBaseT – it saved us a lot of money.

Unfortunately, I tried to save even more money by reducing the spec on some of the projectors – from the G6750s down to G6550, where I could.

But the G6550 doesn’t have HDBaseT onboard.

So we have to couple those with a little Lightware HDBaseT receiver.”

NETWORK: WATCHOUT

Ki McGinity: “Our Dataton Watchout PCs effectively run the show. We’ve got 17 projectors operating from our Watchout systems which synchronises all of the audio of the content via Medialon Showmaster. Showmaster also controls

037

our on/off commands for our Brightsign media players – we run Brightsigns for looping AV on a number of displays. But anything that’s projector-based is talking to Medialon with a Watchout show behind it. Watchout’s driving all the independent timelines and then Medialon is doing all the cueing, including controlling all the audio cue triggers.

“In the rack room we use Lightware equipment as the sender, you’ve still got to have an HDBaseT sender, but the receiver is integrated within the Epson G6750 projectors. The Lightware gear has been pretty solid.

“Joining the Transmitter gear in the racks are the Lightware EDID managers which supply a constant resolution and refresh rate to the Watchout computers – even if the machines are powered down. Windows doesn’t like on/off and reboot when addressing screens and Watchout gets a bit funky, particularly if you’ve got multiple resolutions in one array, like the portrait-oriented Red Baron display, for example, it looks at it as a different resolution because it’s 1200 wide by 1920 high instead of the other way around. So the moment it kinda drops one resolution, it would kill all four projectors in the array. The EDID emulator helps settle things down.

“Dean Stevenson and his team at Interactive Controls built a web interface for the Medialon controller. It’s not a beautiful interface but it works very well. It means our local techs can shut off an area at a time, shut off the lights, turn on everything in the morning, or we can use the Medialon scheduler, which runs the whole show on auto.”

EPSON GEE SERIES

“We’ve got 17 projectors running throughout the exhibition. As I mentioned, we’re using the new G series Epson projectors — the G6750s and 6550s.

“The IWM was using the Epson G6900WU model, but I found the brightness levels (around 7500 lumen) to be excessive for what we needed.

So we pulled things back a notch. We’ve been happy with the Epson performance. They’re a relative newcomer to this particular market but the quality of the projections are more than adequate for our purposes.

HI-RES WAR EFFORT Ki McGinty: “We wanted to retain as much of the super hi-res archival footage resolution as we could.

So we decided to use Watchout because it was probably the most cost-effective option.

“The bezel of the video wall is a factory frame window idea — as if you were looking through the windows at the factory. We’re using Phillips 46-inch panels.

We did a little bit of colour calibration on them, but they were really good straight out of the box. A stereo soundscape provides ambient factory sounds.”

038

AUSSIE ANIMATORS The two-minute animations were produced

by Andrew Barry from Design Collective.

Meanwhile, Picture Drift in Sydney produced the trench and ambient animations. The illustrations look like they’ve come straight out of that period and the references are spot on.

Ki McGinty: “The illustrators poured over the style to get it right. We did an exercise where we grabbed thumbnails from Google of period posters and inserted our own.

Nobody could pick the difference — ie. which was period and which was contemporary.”

FEATURE

“The manual lens shift is probably the only real limitation – I find it’s a little bit fudgy. But as far as brightness and running and clarity, they haven’t missed a beat – 10 hours a day for seven weeks now, and I haven’t seen any diminishing life.”

AUDIO OUTPUTS

A QSC QSys control system runs all the audio within the exhibition, that in turn is managed

by Medialon control. There are 64 QSC loudspeaker boxes (AD-S52s) and seven QSC subwoofers (AD-S82T) driven by 32 QSC GX series amps via 4km of speaker cable. The speaker system was specified, supplied and installed by Daniel Thomas and the team at Light and Sound Solutions.

TRENCH: HIDDEN DEPTHS The WW1 Centenary Exhibition’s ‘trench’ that connects exhibits is a new design, created from scratch. The permanent exhibition in London is rather more literal, featuring the cast of a hand-dugin-the-south-of-France trench — fibreglassed and recreated on site. Not easily trucked from city to city.

To their credit, the exhibition designers, Casson Mann, came back with perhaps an even better idea — an architectural, metaphorical trench.

Within that the AV plays a key role. The projections evoke different periods of the day, different seasons, different environmental conditions, rain, and different battle conditions. The animations, again, meticulously reference artwork from the period down to the thickness of the barbed wire. The result is a ghostly, otherworldly atmosphere, made all the more immersive thanks to an Idee und Klang 8.2 soundscape using sound effects from the time — a tank rolling through, a flare going off, the distant report of rifle fire. The Trench soundscape locks step with the nine-minute loop of the three Lands it provides access to.

Ki McGinty: “I love the trench. It’s so emotive, and I think as a linking concept it elevates the stories of

Ki McGinity: “The QSC audio system is set up in a 1:1 configuration. We have 64 independent channels – one speaker per amp channel. It’s a simple patch and works well. It’s a pretty onerous rack to tour around but it’s nice – great sound quality, great reliability.

“Saying that, the amps are the only items in the entire exhibition without variable voltage. So we’ll need to swap them out when we head the America later in the year.

“It’s amazing how we take variable voltage for granted. Wasn’t so long ago I recall needing to put in three-phase transformers for trips to The States, which was a nightmare. Now we’ve built almost the entire exhibition with variable voltage power supplies.”

the three chapters as a whole.”

There are three ‘Lands’ (Land, Air, Sea) within the exhibition each with an AV animation. The question for Ki and his team — given each space opened up to all the other spaces — was how to ensure the audio wasn’t treading on the toes of other animations. The answer was to ensure no two animations were playing simultaneously. All three rooms would be on one larger loop, with the interconnecting trench also sync’ed to fill the gaps.

Ki McGinty: “We’ve got the rooms synchronised to a nine-minute loop. The first animation plays in one Land followed by a two-minute gap, when audio for the trench plays, then it plays in Air, then a twominute gap in the trench, then it plays at Sea. In that way the narratives are always separated without a lot of audio bleed between areas.

“The AV also leads people’s experience. When an animation is in ‘story mode’ — a two-minute action sequence — all eyes are drawn to the screen.

Then for the remaining seven minutes the ‘ambient animation’ invites eyes to look elsewhere — such as the priceless artifacts. The animation art style is all inspired by First World War posters.”

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040 THE SHOCK OF IMPOSSIBLE MASKING The ‘Shock of War’ is a powerful and poignant panel that describes just how different WWI was to any previous conflict. Idee und Klang put together the 7.1 soundscape, and used a lot of original, studiogenerated sound effects. The producers motioncaptured a stuntman to achieve the falling effect and then reproduced that to simulate a battalion of falling British soldiers.

Ki McGinity: “This is where Casson Mann, as conceptual designers, sometimes test the limits of technology. It’s an extraordinary art installation but to project onto such a surface which has rifles only an inch thick and has more than one layer — where shading from a projector is inevitable — well, it’s a big ask. To mask something like this is almost impossible. And if the projector moves a millimetre, it completely blows out, so it needs plenty of attention to stay locked.

“On this job we brought [Interactive Controls boss] Dean Stevenson in on everything, from control through to display — Dean managed the set up of control, installation of control, installation of cabling, and then they hung all the projectors and connected and commissioned all the touchscreens. Dean and his team don’t miss a beat. Saying that, even Interactive Controls struggled with this.”

FEATURE

A TOUCH OF ELO Ki McGinty: “This touchscreen explains the development of the trench network in the Western Front; why they went into trenches; how they were built; how diverse they became; what techniques they used.

“We use a touchscreen with small form factor Intel NUC PCs at the back — which haven’t missed a beat… heat hasn’t been a problem.

All the touchscreen displays are from Elo and they work really well. I hadn’t used Elo displays before and they’re not the cheapest but you are getting an extra level of commercial robustness. I’m not saying a number of other commercial panels couldn’t have done the job, but the fact Elo come with an open housing means we could integrate the monitors with

custom housing really easily. Normally, if you’re trying to find a 5:4 monitor (which we used for 4:3 content), everything’s got a plastic wrap on it or plastic housing. The Elo documentation has been spot on, you can prepare the housing and your integration before you actually get the unit. We built everything in advance before we’d even seen the monitors, working off the Elo CAD plans. The monitors turned up and they were pretty much perfect.

“The robustness is something to think about when you have thousands of people prodding your screen every day. We’ve used the Elo screens even for displays that aren’t touch sensitive — just because a screen isn’t touch sensitive doesn’t mean the kids won’t bash it.”

ALL AT SEA The animation in the War at Sea space focusses on a gripping tale of HMAS Vindictive raiding a German U-Boat base. The idea of the wide format screen was to continue the horizon line in all the artwork on that wall.

Ki McGinty: “The original brief was for a ultra-wide 9m screen. We settled on 7.2m. We’re using two edge-blended Epson projectors.

“The image has remained remarkably stable. We had concerns because our exhibition grid hangs off the Melbourne Museum grid, which itself is 8m high. We brought everything down to six metres, hung with stainless steel cable and couplers. I was concerned there would be some sway, which would obviously impact on the projections. It does sway if you touch it, but it’s since settled in — I don’t think we’ve readjusted the blend on this once.”

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FEATURE

NO PARTY WITHOUT PUNCH A 4.0 audio system replays soundscapes produced by Idee und Klang, a Swiss sound designer responsible for the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, and the BMW Museum, as well as the permanent WWI gallery in London.

Ki McGinity: “They’re a difficult outfit to work with… in a good way.

They’re very particular about the types of sounds to be used. They’ll research, record and use original sounds wherever possible, so what they produce has a real authenticity.”

The tabletop displays the tension between the empires at the time.

The table animation describes the European geopolitics that led to WWI. The illustrations are from original Punch comics of the time.

Punch is still on the scene and IEC Exhibitions paid royalties for the privilege. The projection surface is MDF painted with Screen Goo and the vision is accompanied by a 4.1 surround system – ambient sounds of that period.

KEEPING THE LIGHTS LOW AUDIO TOUR Ki McGinty: “Art Processors, developers of ‘the o’ mobile guide for MONA [Museum of Old & New Art outside of Hobart], developed our multimedia guide. The idea is to provide a behind the scenes insight from experts. We brought in the two curators Samantha Heyward and Nigel Steel and a third Australian expert, Peter Pederson.

“Then we have the ‘Get Closer’ objects, with the curator talking about the relevance of that artefact, the story behind it and an extended version from the caption. Meanwhile, ‘Listen to the People’ is drawing on the recorded archive of recorded voices in the collection.

“It’s triggered by beacon technology. It triggers the relevant chapter and you can choose what you’d like to explore from there on the handheld touchscreen.”

Art Processors: artprocessors.net

Ki McGinity: “Overall, it’s quite a low voltage system.

The whole show draws around 16,000 Watts, including the lighting, which is low voltage LED. This is the first show where I’ve moved entirely to all low-voltage lighting – a great leap forward in technology. So rather than carry around massive dimmers, all the dimming is on board. We have 250 Selecon BeamShapers, with beautiful LED lamps in them, about 17 projectors and about 20 screens.”

ATTRACTION NOT DISTRACTION

Expectations of special exhibitions are sky high. And to exceed those expectations without the luxury of an installation and truly bedding down into a site is remarkable. But the IEC team has managed that. Yes, the artefacts are the real stars but tell that to the 10 year old visiting with his grandparents! At its core, and what the designers Casson Mann are at pains to ensure: the WW1 Centenary exhibition AV enhances the experience and never distracts. Mission accomplished.  CONTACTS: WWI Centenary Exhibition: ww1exhibition.com.au IEC Exhibitions: www.iecexhibitions.com Interactive Controls (Dataton Watchout, Medialon): www.interactivecontrols.com.au Keepad Interactive (Displays): 1800 463 279 or keepad.com Bluebottle (Lighting): (03) 9329 0709 or bb3.net.au Idee und Klang (Sound Design): ideeundklang.com Light and Sound Solutions (Audio Installation): 1300 66 85 33 or www.lightandsound.com.au Epson: www.epson.com.au/installation Technical Audio Group (QSC): (02) 9519 0900 or www.tag.com.au Lightware: lightware.com.au Avico (Philips): www.avico.com.au Selecon: www.seleconlight.com Sektor (Elo): 1300 273 586 or www.sektor.com.au

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044

TUTORIAL

Boardroom Acoustics Boardrooms are all about effective communication, which makes the acoustics top priority.

Text / Andrew Steel

A

part from Friday afternoon beers and the odd celebration, boardrooms are generally used for important meetings where people need to communicate with a minimum of distraction.

For this to work — whether it’s a meeting within the room, a teleconference or a video conference — speech needs to be clear and easily understood. It may seem painfully obvious that the object of talking to someone is for them to hear you, and hopefully understand you, but this simple and critical relationship is often defeated by the bad acoustics of the room. In fact, it doesn’t really matter if it’s a boardroom, meeting room, conference room or an office being used for a meeting, bad acoustics can make or break the entire meeting.

In addition to proper communication, there’s also the issue of privacy. If you can hear the people outside it’s not only distracting, but means there’s a fair chance they can hear you too.

The interesting thing about this topic is that a very small number of boardrooms actually have good acoustics. The obvious question that arises is, if they are all so bad, why doesn’t anyone try to fix them? The short answer is: most people don’t know how. There’s a widespread misunderstanding of acoustics that leads to no solutions, poor solutions or more commonly the wrong solutions.

Take for example the desktop microphone used for audio or video conferencing. It has evolved to be quite a sophisticated piece of equipment with all sorts of equalisation and echo cancellation capabilities. Despite this, I have seen them replaced multiple times, moved around the boardroom table and sat on foam to try and get decent quality audio to the participants in other locations. Rarely is the microphone at fault. There are two common problems: a room with lots of reverberation and a very long boardroom table. The solutions are of course, to reduce the reverberation and use a number of microphones along the table. This is just one example though, and we will look at each issue in more detail.

BAD VIBES — TOO MUCH REVERB

Too much reverberation is probably the biggest cause of bad boardroom acoustics, so it’s a good place to start. Simply fixing this will make a huge and very noticeable difference. The reason for the high reverberation is the prevalence of glass, painted plasterboard walls and high-gloss glass or stone table tops. All of these surfaces reflect sound very well so it just bounces around the room causing all sorts of interference — termed ‘reduced speech intelligibility’. A carpeted floor is usually the only surface that absorbs sound but it can cause problems of its own. Unless it’s ankle-high shagpile, carpet absorbs high frequency sound only. This leaves the middle and lower frequencies bouncing around and is responsible for that heavy or chesty sound in people’s speech which is very hard to deal with. It

Boxy rooms with reflective walls, low ceilings and acres of hard table top surfaces make for a hostile acoustic environment for high-intelligibility conferencing.

TUTORIAL

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TUTORIAL

“a very small number of boardrooms actually have good acoustics” is the most common description when people say they are having trouble being heard.

The fix is to get some absorption in the room that does for middle and lower frequencies what carpet does for high frequencies. A simple choice is heavy drapes that can be drawn when needed. If the view is more important than that, very fine translucent mesh blinds can be used. In either case they must be hung at least 100mm from the glass to have an effect.

Acoustic ceiling tiles can also be used, but only if the walls of the room extend to the slab above (ie. such that there isn’t a shared ceiling cavity). Acoustic ceiling tiles do their work as sound passes through them, but the sound that passes through can compromise privacy (discussed later in this article).

The most effective countermeasure against excessive reverberation is purpose-made acoustic panels. They have high acoustic absorption and can be made in colours to suit the décor. They can even have pictures like the corporate logo or dogs playing poker printed on them. One panel won’t fix a room though, so you need to anticipate covering up to 40% of the flat wall surfaces that are above the level of the table top.

MULTIPLE MICROPHONES

Once the room is acoustically treated, many problems will evaporate for both local speech and speech using microphones. Saying that, don’t expect a microphone that functions well in a small meeting table to thrive on a long boardroom table. Long tables will have some people closer to the microphone than others, so the level of each person’s speech when it reaches the microphone can vary quite a lot. Some have automatic gain control but they will still struggle with large differences in level. The way to overcome this problem is to use a number of microphones along the table. They can be microphones mounted flush into the table, fixed on goosenecks or on retractable goosenecks.

One interesting tip (may seem trivial, but can make a big difference), is to let people know the microphones are coupled to the desk, so tapping their pen or scraping bangles is not a good idea.

PRESENTING A PROBLEM

If your microphones are positioned and distributed properly in a room with good acoustics, meetings should be relatively free from acoustical problems. The last hiccup, though, can come when presentations are made. Whether it’s someone addressing the room with amplified sound, or conducting a presentation over a video link, there are a few things that can, and often do, cause headaches.

Lapel microphones are our first problem.

They fail often enough to warrant some advice: pack a second system. Actually, while you’re at it, it’s a good idea is to use two lapel microphones — one for the video link and one for the local sound (if there is local amplified sound). In a worst case scenario, if one failed, the other one could be used (with a quick mixer reassignment) for both. Two microphones also provide better control, because the level of sound sent to remote sites is independent of the local sound. This can be useful in preventing feedback issues…

FEEDBACK

Feedback or echo is the last problem on the list. In an acoustically-treated room we have just described, loaded with appropriate microphones, feedback is unlikely, but it can still happen. It happens when the incoming audio from a remote site is routed back to the send by a wrong mixer assignment. As with so many similar things, a simple plan, routing diagram and checklist to cover the details described so far will go a very long way towards a successful meeting. After all, the effort spent in setting up properly with a dry run, is a small price to pay compared to the disasters that can occur when plugging and unplugging in a panic during a conference — doesn’t even bear thinking about it.

THE WALLS HAVE EARS

All we have to do now, to attain boardroom bliss, is to ensure meetings are kept private.

Boardrooms are known for being the flash, fancy or even luxurious rooms, but the big

spending seems to stop at the décor. More often than not, the walls in office buildings only go as high as the ceiling and they are quite thin and uninsulated. This may save huge amounts of money in a whole building, but it makes it very hard to keep rooms acoustically isolated from each other. With penetrations in the ceiling for lights, air conditioning etc, sound just travels into the ceiling cavity and straight back down to the next rooms, and visa-versa. As well as this, the air conditioning ducts usually feed multiple rooms and act as an acoustical connection between them.

Building the walls back up to meet the slab above, and re-ducting the air conditioning are rarely options within the budget. The usual approach is to fill the gap between the walls and the slab above by hanging mass-loaded vinyl or stacking insulation, about 600mm wide, into the gap. This works reasonably well and considering the expense and effort needed to rebuild walls and air conditioning ducts, is a good compromise.

If the walls themselves are not soundproof enough, adding a layer of plasterboard and a product like Green Glue is the best option.

Opening the wall to put insulation inside is, of course, more difficult than most would want to tackle. The remaining breaches of acoustic privacy are the electrical outlets, switches etc.

Power points and the like get installed “back to back” on a wall and cable ducts often split across rooms. These penetrations and ones like them are more than enough for sound to travel through. Fortunately, it’s just a matter of blocking the free spaces with expanding foam or sealing them with a mastic sealant.

Good door seals on any doors will maintain the overall level of soundproofing and make for a room with adequate privacy.

So, as I said at the start, having a boardroom with good acoustics isn’t all that difficult. It requires a little attention to detail and some forethought. There are methods to achieve the necessary acoustic conditions, set up microphones and ensure privacy, none of which are too difficult, and all of which make great improvements. The only oddity is why these things get neglected so often. 

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048

NEWS

Industry Update AV Association News

AV CALENDAR INFOCOMM @ INTEGRATE Integrate 2015 is almost upon us and InfoComm International has again leant its considerable heft to the education program. A range of local and international speakers will be presenting on a wide array of topics over the three days of the show. The sessions combine proven training exercises that will rev up your skills, along with courses that explore emerging trends that will keep you competitive in the ever evolving AV industry.

INFOCOMM EDUCATION PROGRAM DAY 1 Unified Communications: Collaborative Communications across the Enterprise: Case Studies Deploying Unified Communications and the Role of the Audiovisual Industry Presenter: Richard Morrison (AECOM) Live Events: Case Study - Redrocks Ampitheatre, Colorado Presenter: Richard Zweibel (QSC Audio Products LLC) Education: The Connected University Presenter: Peter Coman (InDesign Technologies)

Creating an Exceptional Customer Experience August 26, 2015, 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

Hospitality Suite 2, MCEC Moderator: Rod Brown, CTS-D, CTS-I, Staff Instructor, InfoComm International Customers are treated to a true exceptional experience when technology, the space and content are harmonised through the design vision and operational genius of talented audiovisual professionals. Crown Melbourne is renowned as a facility that delivers these special qualities to its customers.

In this unique session, our panel will explore how successful venues plan, design, install and manage their audiovisual systems to enhance their customer’s experiences. After the session, you will have the opportunity to sign up for an intimate backstage tech tour of Crown Melbourne and its audiovisual systems.

First opened in 1997, Crown Melbourne is a large integrated resort and has a casino, three hotels, function rooms, award-winning restaurants and shopping and entertainment facilities.

You can book tickets now. Ticket cost: $60 incl. GST for Members, $80 incl. GST for Non-Members For all the details on the full program go to: integrate-expo.com/seminars/infocomm-education/

InfoComm University: An Overview of AES-67 Presenter: Richard Zweibel (QSC Audio Products LLC) DAY 2 Woman of AV Breakfast Presenters: Johanne Bélanger, CPA, CA (InfoComm International) and Mandy Johnson (Author of Winning the War for Talent) Education: Future-Proof AV Design: Are We There Yet? Presenter: Michael Comiskey, CTS (AECOM) Unified Communications: UC&C and Huddle Spaces Presenter: Graeme Harrison (Biamp Systems) Education: The Convergence of AV & IT Communications Presenter: Graham Barrett (AMX Australia & New Zealand) and Bob Sharp (AMX) InfoComm University: The HDBaseT Installer Expert Program Presenter: Eli Ofek (Valens) DAY 3 Masterclass: Project Management for Live Events Presenter: Rod Brown (InfoComm International) Implementing InfoComm 10: Audiovisual Performance Verification Testing Presenter: Richard Morrison (AECOM) Just as we were going to press a new session has been added that’s of real interest:

AETM Audiovisual and Educational Technology Management Inc.

AETM New Zealand Chapter Meeting 2015 In early July, AETM held its Inaugural New Zealand Chapter Meeting hosted by Victoria University of Wellington and Massey University. The meeting was designed to give AETM NZ members a chance to network and discuss their regional issues.

With wide ranging topics, including Top 10 Technology Challenges, Emerging Technologies from InfoComm15, University Roadmapping, Asset Management and a Case Study – The Evolution of Integration Lifecycles, intimate yet robust discussions emerged over the two days developing new relationships amongst peers for sharing ideas.

Many NZ members will also travel to this year’s Integrate Expo and AETM’s November Conference and we hope to run more Networking Events in 2016.

INTEGRATE Melbourne, August 25–27 www.integrate-expo.com INFOCOMM INDIA 2015 Mumbai, September 21–23 www.infocomm-india.com PLASA London, October 4–6 www.plasashow.com LDI Las Vegas, October 23–25 www.ldishow.com SMPTE Hollywood, October 26–29 www.smpte.org/ATC AES New York, Oct 29 – Nov 1 www.aes.org/events/139 AETM CONFERENCE Melbourne, November 9–12 www.aetm.org/conferences ISE 2016 Amsterdam, Feb 9-12 2016 www.iseeurope.org

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TUTORIAL

Phase Approach to AV Design Better Processes. Better Projects

The following is an excerpt from Design – Environment Online. This topic will be covered in greater detail, with added project-based skills practice, during InfoComm’s AV Design School in Melbourne and Sydney during 2015.

For enquiries or to enrol, contact Jason York at oceania@infocomm.org Automotive design. Interior design. Designer watches. When you think about it, most of what’s around you adheres to some design. Exceptional AV systems – the type a customer wants and needs – definitely follow a design; as experienced, certified AV designers know.

When you design an AV system the idea is to streamline the process and ensure the system meets the customer’s expectations. The AV design process is iterative, not linear. Because of the dynamic nature of certain projects, components may need to be tweaked and systems modified on the fly. But if designers follow a well-planned process, such as the design phases detailed in ANSI/INFOCOMM 2M-2010 Standard Guide for Audiovisual Systems Design and Coordination Processes, their rate of successful outcomes improves significantly.

Does your AV design go through these phases?

THE PROGRAM PHASE

In general, the purpose of the program phase is to discuss, clarify and document the customer’s needs, concerns, expectations and constraints.

During the needs analysis a customer may only be able to describe generally what he or she would like the AV system to do. The AV designer, therefore, should educate the customer and help fill in missing information. This process will guide the design team in its approach to the functionality and cost of the AV system. When meeting with the customer it’s important to compile a list of needs so that all parties are on the same page. The needs will determine the capabilities of the system. This stage is crucial, because it dictates much of what comes later and gets the customer involved early.

As an outcome of the needs analysis it’s important to compile everything in a program report (sometimes referred to as a Return Brief).

This report should outline the needs of the customer, the purpose and function of the system, a cost estimate, and ultimately be signed off as indication of the customer’s approval. A typical programme report includes:

• Executive summary (an overview of the project) • Space planning (where everything will go) • System descriptions (often a non-technical sketch of key systems and functionality) • Infrastructure considerations (electrical, voice, IT, etc.)

• Budget recommendations (probable costs to procure and install the system, plus everything from taxes to price mark-ups and contingencies) The finalised version of this document should be distributed to everyone involved. It will become the basis of the design phase.

THE DESIGN PHASE

This is where the system begins to take form – on paper at least. The design phase takes the information from the needs analysis and the programme report and translates them into system specifications and concept drawings. The first group of documents outlines the system’s specifications. It describes functionality, operation and performance specifications, such as frequency response, contrast ratio, etc. Other items in this section may include installation and testing procedures, as well as warranty information.

The second group of documents consists of drawings. This is where the system is visually represented and gives the customer and other stakeholders an idea of what the system will look like at completion. The drawings also include system diagrams, showing how everything is connected.

THE CONSTRUCTION PHASE

Time to introduce the installation team.

This phase consists of preparing detailed documents, such as workshop drawings, which communicate technical aspects of the system prior to the hand-over to the installation team.

These technical drawings provide detailed and specific information, as well as laying down the foundation to assist the installation team with implementing the design.

THE VERIFICATION PHASE

We are not finished yet! Even after the transition to the installation team, the AV designer still has an important role to play – ensuring the installed system meets the customer’s requirements, as detailed in the needs analysis. A process should

be in place to review and verify each part of the system. If any modifications are made along the way, they should be approved by the customer.

There are tools to help with systems verification.

ANSI/INFOCOMM 10:2013 Audiovisual Systems Performance Verification (which you can find on the Infocomm.org website) details 160 possible items which need checking to make sure the system works properly. If you’re not sure what needs verification, InfoComm’s Audiovisual Systems Performance Verification Guide (again, you can find the guide on the InfoComm website) is a huge help, and it’s free.

Of course even when an AV designer takes the necessary steps to ensure a system follows a streamlined process there can be nuances. There are different ways to approach certain phases, and pros and cons based on the type of project.

There may be extra complexity to explore – such as the physics that affect certain AV environments with respect to sound reinforcement, display and projection optimisation, and more.

CTS-D CERTIFICATION

Design is a complex, critical part of a successful AV project. If you want to learn more, or even work toward your CTS-D certification, you can start in the comfort of your home or office.

InfoComm’s design curriculum is now offered online, including AV Design 1: Environment (check the InfoComm site for more), which goes over the design phases discussed here. Better processes, better projects. 

050

HUMOUR?

Termination Cosmological Futurism-ality Text:/ Graeme Hague

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veryone knows that in space no one can hear you scream, but can they see your screen? Here’s my questions: What’s the real future of AV? I don’t mean next year or even the next decade, let’s have a think about the next millennia. Because I’ve been reading a bit of science fiction lately and an interesting concept came up. Bear with me... and note I’ve changed the real name of the planets to protect the innocent.

We’re in the year 3056 and the good folks of planet Splodge have been at war with the nearby occupants of planet Splunge. Unfortunately, Splunge is littered with rare, ancient artifacts and a Splodgian professor is keen to not entirely blow Splunge to pieces. This is a sort of treason, but no one’s quite sure, so a journalist is following the professor around, recording everything he says and does on her personal tablet, hoping he’ll incriminate himself properly and face a lifetime of banishment to the prison planet Splart.

“even the Jedi Council still won’t have the NBN by 3056” Hang on... did I say tablet? It’s the 4th millennia and she’s still using a personal tablet?

Surely the computer manufacturers of the world have come up with something better than a tablet by now? Sure, Solitaire will still be installed, but on tablets?

I’ll mention a caveat. Even the author chucked in something like, “Because even in 3056 on the planet Splodge tablets are still the most efficient means of creating written notes”.

Bit of a cop out, but fair enough — he might be

right. What else will people be using? Science fiction writers love to create all kinds of crazy, other-worldly technology, but in a practical sense maybe we have already reached a zenith of basic tablet design?

So what about AV display screens? In the 4th millennia what will be so amazingly, futuristically different to what we have today? Something we can’t even imagine?

We can have a look at the Star Wars thing. A sort of three-dimensional hologram. The image flickers and flutters, and the audio keeps breaking up, but that’ll be because even the Jedi Council still won’t have the NBN by 3056. That little map thingy you can get on the internet will probably fall just short of the Dagobah System.

Most likely, we’ll be looking at a Star Trek-ish kind of deal with a big-arse monitor screen on the wall that somehow gets a video feed of anything – like, anything. All you have to say is, “Put it on screen” and Spock does his thing. The whole universe will be chockers with tiny, permanent cameras everywhere. The USS Enterprise will be swatting them off the windscreen like bugs as it boldly goes blah blah blah...

So yep, even in the 4th millennia on the planet Splodge, chances are your standard method of displaying an image for everyone to see will be through a big, flat screen. It might be 3D, maybe it’ll be something more — but still a display on the wall. Which doesn’t mean we can’t dream up a few improvements.

Automatic Real Time Translation: Anytime, anywhere... the screen automatically translates whatever is being spoken into your language of choice. Okay, no big deal? But think about the filters you could apply. In particular, you could filter out any time someone puts ‘ality’ on the end of a word and thinks it’s a real word. Let’s take an opportunity here... people, listen up. You can’t put bloody ‘ality’ on the end of any damned word

you please! There, I feel better now.

Automatic Lie Detection: Facial recognition works well already. You could turn on Automatic Lie Detection that picks up little facial ticks and squinty-eye moments when somebody’s telling a porky. Speech bubbles could appear on the screen not only notifying the audience of a lie, but they could display what the person is really saying. Like, when your wife says, “What time will you be home for dinner?” and she actually means, “I’m leaving before you get home, taking the kids, the car and all your money, because I know you’re sleeping with your secretary”... or something. Okay, it might need fine-tuning, but you get the idea.

Automatic Facial Replacement: All right, we can already program our phones to play a unique ringtone when certain people are calling. So think about this for an example of Automatic Facial Replacement – every time Bronwyn Bishop is on the telly it’s kind of alarming, right? That ferocious stare and the traces of half-eaten children down the front of her dress (Bronwyn’s come a long way from the Gingerbread House, but old habits die hard). What if you could automatically replace Bronwyn’s image with Angelina Jolie every time she was on the screen?

Wouldn’t that be brilliant? With a bit of tweaking, Parliamentary Question Time could resemble the orgy scenes in I Claudius.

Obviously, the possibilities on the planet Splodge in 3056 should be endless. Anything can happen, technology will be gob-smacking.

Except we’ll still be using tablets for taking notes and we’ll still be watching big-arse TV screens mounted on the wall. Who’d have thunk it?

Which means the future is now. Live long and prosper.  Graeme Hague is not a futurist.

THE NEXT GENERATION OF AV E CELLENCE

The evolution continues.

In August, Midwich will bring our team, our technology and our passion to Melbourne for the Integrate show.

Please join us on August 25th– 27th, stand J14 for an insightful technology tour.

There will be many Australian firsts and localised highlights from Infocomm. Midwich will be unveiling a range of innovative conferencing solutions from Vaddio, a premier global manufacturer of PTZ cameras and professional AV solutions. See you there.

Jason Coy, ANZ Sales Manager

integrate-expo.com

Please call our sales team on 1300 666 099 or visit www.midwich.com.au to arrange a technology tour.

OUR E PERTISE IS YOUR ADVANTAGE ' E&OE. Trademarks are the property of respective manufacturers. Calls may be recorded for training or demonstration purposes. Midwich Limited 2015 Š Midwich Limited, Vinces Road, Diss, Norfolk, IP22 4YT.