With this in mind he decided to build a world class convention centre on the Infosys campus in Bangalore, which would also be capable of hosting live dance and music events (including a 60-piece symphony orchestra), theatre and international conferences. The ability to telecast and webcast these events live to all their campuses and offices worldwide was a further pre-requisite.
In addition to live performances, the 1,400 seater auditorium also had to be able to play back movies on a giant screen in both the latest 2K digital format as well as in regular 35mm, with 7.1 digital sound.
MRH Digital Systems Pvt. were among the companies who responded to this exacting brief, proposing a combination of mission-critical QSC Audio SR and networking solutions as part of an entire multimedia integration.
"The entire process was transparent and each and every vendor was evaluated clinically," said MRH Digital Systems' Poncho Gopinadhan. "However, the most important reason for MRH to bag this order was the fact that Infosys was very happy with the positive meaner in which we conducted the whole negotiation and they instinctively felt that they could trust us to deliver."
MRH was alone in proposing that the customer opt for two independent solutions for the Cinema and PA requirements. "We advised that one very noticeable fact would be that the speech of the actors in a film would appear to be coming from elsewhere rather from the mouth of the actor [from a conventional PA system]. All other competitors advocated one solution for both the requirements. QSC components comfortably fulfilled both remits operating as two stand-alone systems."
Working alongside consultant Jal Mistry and chief architect Hafeez Mistry, MRH Digital Systems proposed a QSC's flown ILA line array system, driven by PowerLight amps, as being best able to handle a range of concerts - from Indian classical to hard rock - and theatre events where speech intelligibility was vital.
The system design was masterminded by QSC Audio's product application specialist, Santiago Alcalá. Two sets of amplifiers were required - one for the FOH speakers and one for the delay system to the balcony. Instead of traditional balanced wiring between the two racks MRH Digital opted for a CobraNet system. "Also, by harnessing the power of the QSContol.net networked audio platform we had complete supervision of the system," said Gopinadhan.
QSContol.net was provided for room EQ via a wireless network, allowing the in-house or visiting sound engineers to walk around the venue with seamless control over the complete system. In addition, the installers provided a selection of unobtrusive NAC-100 local controllers, installed on the network to allow presets, room modes etc to be flipped through.
Finally, for constant system monitoring MRH Digital also installed a fixed computer on the network, using QSCreator to develop an error reporting GUI.
For the FOH PA system, two hangs of eight WL2082-I are complemented by four WL115-sw subwoofers flown behind. For additional bass reinforcement two WL218-sw enclosures have been flown in the centre, while up at balcony level MRH Digital have deployed a further two hangs of four WL2082-I.
Turning the to the dedicated cinema system, three QSC SC-434 systems were specified and three QSC SB 7218 dual sub-woofers, along with no fewer than 52 QSC SR 110B surround speakers, which are used around the auditorium.
The sale was co-ordinated by Sriram Sistla, MRH Digital's business head south, who also designed the cinema element of the system.
(Jim Evans)
