VDC Trading supplied the Van Damme cabling which was used throughout the facility with all speaker lines running on Van Damme Star Quad multicore cable to minimise interference from the lighting system and power. In addition the Van Damme stage box connected at three points around the room used Van Damme Blue Series multicore and all cable stock used Van Damme Classic Mic Cable.
Justin Spier said, "We specified Van Damme cable, as we always do. Van Damme are the only company we have found with workable cable that still conforms to colour coded pairs - essential when wiring patch bays in our opinion and is the only choice for the studios we build."
The facility comprises of an upper ceiling grid terminating to 32, beam mounted, XLR termination points and 32 lower floor grid XLR termination points. The system terminates to GPO B gauge jack fields at the rear of the room and is driven by a 64 channel RME MADI based playback system on an Apple Mac Pro in a Sonnet chassis to allow for 64 channels of audio playback to feed a 32 channel Genelec speaker array with room for expansion.
Multiple video feeds were run to the main panels on the upper and lower grids on multiple formats to allow for video capture and projection for concerts and lectures. MADI and video feeds were run on their respective Van Damme co ax cables.
De Montfort's Performing Arts Centre for Excellence was established five years ago and is a flexible workspace for a range of performance and installation arts. Regular concerts are held two weekly during term times, attracting a range of international artists including Tim Exile, Pauline Oliveros, Christian Zanesi, Martin Ware (The Human League) and Jem Finer (The Pogues).
(Jim Evans)
