Fairmont hotel

A sound that draws the atmosphere of any environment

Matteo Fontana

Recently inaugurated on the outskirts of London, the Fairmont Windsor Park Hotel offers its guests a five-star experience in all respects, including audio, made by Hoist Group and entrusted to an ecosystem of well-known Bose products for their quality, as well as for the care of the design

The Hoist Group is responsible for the design and installation of the audio broadcasting system (under the Bose brand) for the brand-new Fairmont Windsor Park Hotel, a newly opened luxury hotel located just outside London. Hoist Group is part of the larger Planet group, a global technology leader dealing with hospitality technologies around the world. The Fairmont Windsor Park Hotel is equipped with elegant and very spacious rooms, but also with spa facilities, restaurants and more, all designed to immerse the visitor in a refined and welcoming atmosphere, in which the guests’ well-being is definitely the central focus. Located next to Great Windsor Park, with 40 acres of green space and a peaceful lake, the hotel is not far from Heathrow Airport, so is easily accessible by those who use it as a stopover. It also allows you to quickly reach the centre of London, placing itself in perfect balance between the tranquillity of the suburbs and the liveliness of the urban centre.

The project

The Fairmont Windsor Park Hotel belongs to the well-known Arora Group, indeed it represents, without doubt, one of its flagships. A salient feature of this large hotel group is the commitment to use the best and latest technological solutions available, with the idea of offering guests extraordinary experiences not only in the privacy of their rooms, but also in the common spaces and in the surrounding environments. Therefore, from the beginning, the Fairmont Windsor Park Hotel was designed to be a luxurious five-star hotel and to put the well-being of each guest at the centre of the experience, without neglecting any detail and, above all, without giving up on designing the atmosphere of all environments, both from an architectural and furnishing point of view and from a technological and service point of view. Precisely to respect this idea, Arora Group has decided to invest in a wide-ranging and very accurate audio solution: this is where Bose Professional comes into play, which had already collaborated, as a partner, both with the Arora Group and with its "arm construction”, Grove Development.

The staple is Bose Professional

Bose Professional solutions were Hoist's choice for this project, which had several challenging aspects from the outset. “For us - said Phil Campbell, senior vice president of sales and business development at Hoist Group - this is probably one of the largest installations, both in terms of the number of devices and the size of the solution implemented. In fact, we had to cover 34 areas within the structure, and this led to the need to plan with the utmost precision when laying the necessary cables and the location of the technological equipment." The client's request was for a Bose speaker to be present in the bathroom of each room, and for this speaker to be connected to the television in the room, for an interlaced and unique, truly enveloping experience. Even in the specialised spaces, such as the first-class spas and the rooms in the annex, the arrangement of the speakers followed precise guidelines for obtaining immersive effects for the guests. In short, a meticulous design, as befits a luxury location. The size of the areas to be covered and the number of Bose solutions required to control and integrate the entire property required a very high level of both network and AV expertise. Here's how it went.

Bose + Dante = Fairmont!

The system designed by Hoist Group together with the representatives of Bose Professional therefore provides a combination of EdgeMax EM90 and EM180 loudspeakers, FreeSpace and ControlSpace solutions, integrated thanks to Audio Networking solutions on Dante protocol: thus the tailor-made solution was born to meet the high expectations of the exclusive Fairmont Windsor Park Hotel. To give an idea of the complexity of the system, suffice it to say that the area occupied by the Fairmont Windsor is divided into more than twenty separate music zones, all with different requirements for musical style, volume level and audio flexibility. It was therefore necessary to have not only a large number of diffusers of various types, to satisfy all the specifications, but also a considerable control capacity, in order to manage such a layered and flexible system. Using Bose ControlSpace technology with Dante, the hotel staff are able to adjust or change the audio of each area, thus affecting the atmosphere of them all, and each time providing an adequate audio quality for guest experience. The EdgeMax flush-mounted speakers enter the scene, mainly, due to the very high ceilings of many rooms and the large open spaces that characterise the hotel park. Phil Campbell explains: “I knew Arora wanted an aesthetically pleasing interior, without too many traces of technology, especially on the ceilings. We made the most of the capabilities of Bose EdgeMax technology, which first allowed us to reduce the amount of speakers to install, which means less impact on ceilings and furnishings; moreover, we were able to install them along the edges of the rooms, avoiding products that are too visible in the centre of the rooms or suspended."

Processors, controllers, amplifiers: the "General Staff" of the Bose army

The Bose Professional brand therefore dominates the sound system of the Fairmont Windsor, and let's take a closer look at its management, starting with the ControlSpace EX-1280 digital signal processor, characterised by open architecture, single rack unit design, designed for audio processing applications thanks to its twelve analog mic / line inputs and eight analogue outputs. The AmpLink output and Dante 64x64 connectivity (i.e. 64 lines in and the same number out) allow very flexible configurations, while the ControlSpace Designer software simplifies the configuration of the processor. The choice of power amplifiers is also fundamental. Hoist Group opted for the configurable PowerMatch PM8250N model, flanked by the PowerShare PS404D and PowerShare PS604D. The PowerMatch PM8250N offers multiple channels and power options and integrated audio DSP, with Ethernet-based network configuration, control and monitoring via the front panel. The PowerShare amplifiers, on the other hand, offer high audio performance and reliability with patented technologies inherited from the PowerMatch line, with even more flexibility. PowerShare PS404D allows you to distribute 400 total watts of power asymmetrically across all outputs or use any single output to provide full power. The same features, but on 600 watts of power, are found in the PS604D. The control interfaces deserve a separate mention, starting with the Bose ControlSpace CC-64, a programmable and networked controller that provides users with an interface capable of combining simplicity with elegance, a fundamental detail for prestigious locations such as the Fairmont Hotel. With the CC-64 you can control audio signal settings and pre-set scenarios intuitively, with just a few buttons. Menu items are displayed on a 40-character backlit LCD display, and the controller - being programmable - gives the user the ability to customise a number of parameters and items, including audio sources, scene selection and specific settings. system configurations. Up to sixteen CC-64s can be used for each ControlSpace system. If the CC-64 is a Control Center, in the individual zones, where necessary, we have opted for the ControlSpace CC-16 Zone Controllers, a wall device that shares the characteristics of the "big brother" CC-64, connecting to the ControlSpace Engineered Sound Processor (ESP-88) via RS-485 port. Up to fifteen CC16 units can be used for each ESP-88 to provide extensive and precise local control of the system, where the CC-64 takes care of centralised control. Since these are network devices, however, these controllers can also be programmed remotely, at any time.

The "soldiers" in the field: the speakers

After the examination of the "General Staff" of the system, we obviously also see the "infantry" deployed on the field, or the speakers, all characterised by small and compact dimensions, ideal for being placed in elegant and constrained architectural contexts. In the front row, here are the aforementioned EdgeMax EM90 and

Bose Fairmont Windsor Park Orchid Tea Room EM180 models, premium ceiling speakers based on Bose PhaseGuide technology (see the appropriate box) with high-frequency compression drivers. Both models have 8” woofers and two-way passive crossover with 70 / 100V transformer. the difference is that the EM90 model has a nominal horizontal coverage of 90°, against the 180 ° of the EM180. The 45Hz - 20kHz frequency range eliminates the need for a subwoofer. However, the FreeSpace FS4CE speakers also deserves a mention, designed for ceiling or wall mounting with features that make installation easy and increase the life of the system. Moreover, these are speakers suitable both for music diffusion and for any announcements. FS4CE mounts a 4.5” transducer and covers a frequency range up to 70 Hz, with sensitivity of 88 dB SPL / 1 W at 1 metre. If Rie FS, the smaller FS2Cs, were also used in the Fairmont Windsor Hotel, with a 2.25” transducer, frequencies up to 83 Hz and sensitivity of 86 dB SPL / 1 W at 1 metre. The army in the field is completed by the FreeSpace FS4SE models for ceiling or wall mounting with 4.5" transducer, and by the small, very useful FreeSpace 360P environmental loudspeaker, designed to integrate perfectly in outdoor environments thanks to the innovative design and in capable of providing 360° coverage, which allows you to install fewer speakers than models with reduced coverage. With the FreeSpace 360P it is possible to spread the sound evenly, its low frequency range reaches up to 60 Hz, while the specially designed case protects it from sand, snow, rain etc. And with an "army" of products so dedicated to audio success, the Arora Group can rest assured that Fairmont Hotel guests are relaxing in their rooms, dining in one of the restaurants, enjoying the spa or swimming pool outdoors or, again, the splendid gardens, will have an enveloping and captivating overall experience. A must, therefore, to close with a statement from the commercial director of the Arora Group hotels, Raj Shah, who said of the Bose ecosystem: "It is phenomenal technology and we are really happy to have Bose quality audio in so many of our hotels. In this way we know that wherever our guests are, their experience will involve all the senses. " 

https://pro.bose.com www.fairmont-windsorpark.com www.hoistgroup.com