UK - Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), the first institution in the world dedicated to research and teaching in tropical medicine, recently undertook a significant project to extend its teaching and event capabilities. Pembroke House, a mixed-use facility was constructed with three main teaching spaces alongside small huddle areas and group collaboration zones.
Initially engaged as consultants, leading Higher Education integrator GVAV subsequently secured the integrator scope for the Pembroke House project. Collaborating closely with Audiologic, a comprehensive spread of equipment from Q-SYS and Sennheiser was specified for deployment across the different spaces.
The Audiologic team was engaged to assist with confirming the final designs for the audio solution plus programming and commissioning of this aspect of the project. Due to the complexity of the rooms and the client requirements for the system, the integration of beam-forming microphones and the Q-SYS system was necessary. Despite facing numerous challenges, including the need for extensive programming by their expert application support engineers, the project was successfully completed.
Each of the three distinct teaching spaces presented different acoustic and layout requirements, tailored to their specific function, yet the entire space demanded an intuitive, cohesive feel and user experience throughout the venue.
Facilitating hybrid teaching was key, accommodating both local and remote lecturers as well as guest speakers. This is a further step from hybrid and remote learning, with the ability for remote lecturing.
Dan Victory, group technical director at GVAV comments “We went to Ben at Audiologic as a sounding board for ideas and to fine tune product choices. We agreed early on that Q-SYS was the best means to process the microphone data, control the cameras and system peripherals. We looked at different tracking array microphones, and given the deeper integration of the Sennheiser TCC2 with Q-SYS, we decided that this was the best microphone choice both for audio quality and for tracking performance.”
The Q-SYS Core 8 Flex audio DSP manages Dante, AES67 and analogue audio, also leveraging the power of the Q-SYS control platform. ACPR allows connection to Sennheiser microphones, steers the presets on the AVer cameras and changes video routing on the AVoIP system.
The system allows any user to be tracked without any training requirements - camera tracking is both audience and lecturer, depending on who is speaking.
Victory adds, “We did an initial pilot of the tracking system in the first room, Learn 1, leaving it a few weeks for testing and bedding in. We then made a few adjustments following feedback from end users, before rolling the same configuration out to Learn 2 and 3 spaces with programming fine-tuned for each space and scenario.”
Thomas Cullen, AV Manager at LSTM states, "GVAV's technical expertise and foresight led to the recommendation of Q-SYS and the TCC2 for superior audio capture and automated camera switching. Their technical director played a pivotal role, providing invaluable knowledge and mentorship, significantly enhancing our AV team's expertise."
“Our thanks to Diogo from Audiologic for his exemplary work, going above and beyond with his expert programming skills, on site working with GVAV and LSTM staff to ensure all scenarios were optimised.” concludes Victory.
