Set up two years ago, Trevor Montgomery's company has been upgrading, fitting out and maintaining the Holmes Place audio visual systems for over 12 months. He remembers finding a lot of custom-built equipment within the estate - "expensive to build and maintain, with a lot of relays which were highly space consuming and proving to be unreliable."
After experimenting with another system, his desire for something "more PA-oriented" led him to the 8 x 8 DigiPage zoning system; and it has remained his preferred matrix device ever since. "We first used it at Barbican, which was a difficult site, and required something reliable and robust," he said. "What I like about the DigiPage system is that it is highly flexible. Engineers love it, but at the same time it looks too complex to be tampered with by unskilled staff. On top of everything it is extremely compact."
Selecter handle many of the audio visual installations for Holmes Place - from the Cardio Theater personal wireless entertainment systems to the 52" rear projection, plasma and LCD screens plus the aerobics studio systems.
Most recently the company has installed a n 8 x 8 DigiPage Jr and remote panels at Holmes Place Hendon - on the site of a former cinema. This was supplied - like the T&M Systems SA 200 and SA 450s amplifiers, which drive the sound in the aerobics studios - by UK distributors Fuzion plc.
The DigiPage system comprises the 8x8 Zone Paging system (the remote paging station being situated at the front desk), and each of the eight zones has a dedicated local mic or line input. Six of these inputs are routable to any of the eight zones while a priority input, activated by the ducking circuitry, puts out alert, evacuation, bell and pre-announce chimes. At Hendon, the eight-zone DigiPage Mic station services the main gym, club room, toilets and walkway, changing areas, ladies gym and beauty areas.
But in an application which does not have its own dedicated Control Room, space is also at a premium; because of DigiPage's eight-channel configuration Selecter has been able to reduce the previous 40U rack height to a mere 21U to serve Hendon's five-zone set-up - with help from three Australian Monitor AMIS 1202P 120W + 120W dual-channel power amps. This pumps out background music from the programmable hard disk scheduler and five-disk CD changer as back-up.
In addition Selecter fit as standard an Australian Monitor MP8 monitor panel which allows engineers to monitor up to eight channels of 100V line amplification from a 2U rack panel.Montgomery adds: "Because the DigiPage network is all wired on CAT 5 it's nice and controllable and it means that you can use the cable structure for everything from a pump station top box to a telephone rather than running different cables for different systems making DigiPage a more integrated solution."
The next port of call for Selecter will be Holmes Place, Ealing where Montgomery will again be applying a complete AV solution. He concludes, "It's all well and good having great kit but without the back-up it's nothing. With Fuzion we know we can rely on that all the time. Their response time is fast and technical backup excellent. They spent a lot of time at the PLASA Show explaining the merits of the DigiPage system.
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
