Each Sports Café entertainment system is custom designed at Metropolis. Company chief design engineer Shane Winterbourne explained it has developed a specific technical formula across the Sports Café venues, primarily so: "Managers can go into any site and work the AV systems."
Metropolis supplied, installed and commissioned the house dimming and effects lighting, which includes 13 Robe Spot160 XT moving lights and 18 Par 64s, controlled via a LightProcessor Power Station 18 channel dimmer and a QCommander 512 desk. Winterbourne comments: "Effects lighting for the Sports Café is designed to be easily operated and robust. The system is worked hard, and often used by semi-technical staff."
Screens are omnipresent in Sports Cafés and Metropolis control racks control them all. These form the core of the installation and include three Kramer VS162V 16 x 16 video matrices. All video sources are fed into these then via a series of video distribution amplifiers to the numerous plasma screens and the projector for larger viewing area downstairs.
Metropolis installed forty 32" and 28" televisions and 18 plasma screens. For the dancefloor screen, Winterbourne specified a Mitsubishi XL5900 projector with a short throw lens. The challenge was utilizing the extremely shallow viewing angle and space left for fitting the projector once the building was reinforced with new steelwork during the construction.
For the restaurant booths, Metropolis sourced small 15" LCD screens, compete with little channel scrollers, allowing diners to change AV channels via an Alcorn McBride 1064 input/output expansion module. Trademark Metropolis Sports Café features include the front entrance video wall, for which Winterbourne developed a special video switcher. Based on the Kramer 162 video matrix, the TFT displays can now show either the same picture across multiple screens or a variety of different images. An additional customized switching unit was developed to sort out the video destination points enabling managers to select predefined sources for all of the screens or groups of sources across the display with the press of a single button.
For audio, Metropolis selected a variety of HK and JBL speakers, the dancefloor is serviced with 10 HK IL 12.1 speakers for the mid/highs, and two IL 115 subs. Dotted around the rest of the building are a selection of HK's IL8.2 full-range installation speakers, complete with two subs on the ground floor of the restaurant and bar. Up in the first floor pool area, the company installed JBL Control 26C ceiling speakers.
Amplification is QSC throughout - eight RMX 1450s, one RMX 850 and an RMX 2450, all going through an Allen & Heath IDR 8 audio processor. The background sound is supplied from a Rolec Hard Disk music system, and is divided into six areas and channelled through a Cloud Z8 zoner. The DJ booth contains Technics 1210 decks, a Stanton S750 dual CD player and a Formula Sound FSM 600 DJ Mixer. The whole installation was completed in three and a half weeks by the Metropolis team, led by project manager Stuart Clowes.
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
