"With the addition of several other halls, the old system was severely under-powered," explained managing director, Colin Walker. His solution has been to power eight separate sound zones on a TOA matrix, using multiples of TOA’s VP-1060 (60W) and VP-1120 (120W) 100V line amplifiers. "I wanted TOA power as the previous amplifiers just weren’t adequate," said Colin. The centre’s general manager, Gerald Salt, commented: "With this level of investment, a top quality PA and PAVA system, which could service all areas of our new development and all the old sectors of the premises, was an imperative. We gave the challenge to Quality Communications to design and produce the new complete system, using TOA equipment."
The hub of the installation is an SX-1000 digital matrix management system, fed from three SX-1200 data mics and four PM-660D paging mics. In addition a TOA EV-350 message recorder stores up to 126 digitally pre-recorded general messages for show announcements, with fire and evacuation announcements on their DSM-200 digital audio playback card. The recording was undertaken by TOA themselves, using their DSM-200, which features both a digital ‘watchdog’ for monitoring and reporting failure of digital circuits and an audio ‘watchdog’ for audio outputs and audio signal failures.
Throughout the three halls Quality Communications have evenly distributed 24 TOA PE-164 diffuser speakers and in the walkways a total of 41 TOA PC-1867 6W ceiling speakers have been specified. Finally, TOA supplied wall cabinets, racks and a five-tray multi-CD player. All equipment is wired in fire-proof cable and everything is backed up, so each hall is divided into A and B zones, doubling up on two circuits per zone.
(Lee Baldock)
