Initially established specifically for young people, over the years mac has broadened its remit, and today welcomes over 500,000 visitors each year, including 10% of Birmingham's population, who come to enjoy a programme which concentrates on the contemporary, showcasing artists across the full range of arts practice: film, theatre, dance, literature, visual arts, music and comedy.
The Edgbaston venue, also known as the Midlands Arts Centre, has made the most of the opportunity to install a cost-saving Cat 5e REAC-based network, which provides flexibility to this hive of artistic creativity. In mac's main 220-seat theatre, which has been completely stripped out and re-equipped with new seating, lighting and sound systems, a new 48-channel RSS M-400 V-Mixer sits on the network at front-of-house.
Andy Elsegood, the Stage Electrics business development manager who supplied the consoles plus three S-1608 Snakes, also recommended RSS' new S-0808 lightweight Digital Snakes. mac has purchased four of these 8in/8out compact snakes, which support multiple power options including battery power, embedded power over REAC and power over Ethernet (PoE).
mac's head of technical resources Simon Creed has taken two S-0808s and paired them together to create two complete point-to-point 8x8 snake systems, which he can also use as stage input boxes for the RSS V-Mixer, using the REAC (Roland Ethernet Audio Communication) protocol running on the Cat 5e cable. S-0808 satellite stage boxes are also installed in mac's cinema and in the music/education studio, ensuring full potential connectivity.
Audio and power is transferred over Cat 5e cable using another new RSS product, the S-4000M REAC Merge Unit, which allows distribution of I/O units in a variety of locations, where AC power is not available or inconvenient to run. Simon Creed explains, "this enables us to take our second mobile M-400 V-Mixer outdoors into the external stage area, a 400-capacity Arena, where we will host gigs. Being able to use a single Cat 5e cable instead of a multicore is a massive advantage in terms of manpower and time."
(Jim Evans)
