China - Duke Kunshan University has a team of faculty members located all over the world and has requirements for blended smart education. Duke Kunshan University has installed 116 Sennheiser TCC 2 Ceiling Array Microphones in 50 classrooms and various other spaces across its campus, providing students and faculty with an immersive blended learning experience that is easy to operate.
Located in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province, Duke Kunshan University (DKU) is a 1,200-acre campus dedicated to creating a world-class educational and research university characterized by liberal arts education, offering a range of high-quality, innovative academic programs and a diverse, inclusive culture to students from around the globe in order to cultivate well-educated and enthusiastic future global leaders.
This audio-video project is part of the university's second phase, covering 22 buildings on campus, including 29 classrooms, 20 conference rooms, and a visitor centre and is characterised by large scale, advanced technology, and high complexity. Duke Kunshan University set its sights on a number of top global brands. In the end, the Sennheiser TCC 2 ceiling array microphone stood out. Duke Kunshan University chose to install a total of 116 TCC 2s so that every space can enjoy the trusted Sennheiser audio quality.
The TCC 2 utilises patented Dynamic Beamforming technology, which automatically tracks the position of speakers and switches between speakers in real time, ensuring that their voices are clearly captured. Teachers are able to move around and communicate freely with students while teaching, and the layout of desks and chairs in the classroom can be flexibly adjusted to greatly enhance the classroom experience.
The microphone's built-in 28 broadcast-quality microphone heads make the sound clear and natural, and remote teachers and students can also listen to the speakers clearly as if they were in the room.
In teleconferencing, the seamless integration of audio and video is very important. In this project, TCC 2 integrates Biamp DSP and Sony PTZ camera tracking to synchronize the monitored speaker's position to the camera, thus realising real-time switching of the speaker's footage, which makes the meeting more realistic, efficient and immersive.
The Visitor Centre is another highlight of this project. In order to provide excellent conditions for teachers and students to communicate, display and hold activities and exhibitions, the centre built by the school has a flexible layout and a bright and spacious space, with an area of 400sq.m and a height of 4.8m, in addition to the need for high-quality sound pickup, the site of the local sound reinforcement is also a very high demand. Three TCC 2s were installed in the centre, whose TruVoicelift acoustic enhancement feature delivers everyone's speeches clearly to every corner, with natural, full sound quality and no distortion or delay, making for a truly immersive audio experience.
The Duke Kunshan University Phase II project, which took three years to design and deploy and complete, was not only large in scale but also in complexity. The project's audio/video system includes many types of products including Biamp DSP, Bose loudspeakers and Crestron control systems.
During the implementation of the project, Sennheiser's technical engineers went to Duke Kunshan University several times to carry out on-site investigation and debugging work room by room to ensure that the installation position and angle of each TCC 2 could achieve the optimal effect and realize the best voice clarity.
