The Computer History Museum is located in the heart of Silicon Valley, an appropriate location for a facility dedicated to the preservation and celebration of computing history. The Museum is home to one of the largest international collections of computing artifacts in the world, including hardware, photographs, documents, software, movies and more.
"We chose BSS Audio because we needed a system that could accommodate the signal distribution, processing and control needs of a large, complex networked audio installation," noted Bowen Technovation president, Jeff Bowen, whose company specialises in audio/video, lighting, control and production solutions for museums, planetariums, science centres and other facilities.
The Museum's BSS Audio equipment includes the BLU-160 signal processor, BLU-120 I/O expander and BLU-BOB2 (Break-Out Box) output expander. Each of these components feature the Soundweb London digital audio bus, which can carry up to 256 channels of digital audio over standard Cat 5e cable. The entire audio system is networked using Harman's HiQnet protocol.
"The exhibit space has close to 100 video displays with sound, as well as four theatres," noted Bowen. "Because of the long distances involved, extra care needed to be taken in the system design to ensure that signals from the control rooms reached their intended devices without loss of quality or dependability," continued Bowen. "In addition, the exhibit space has an open design and achieving a good audio balance was a small challenge."
(Jim Evans)
