GCCEC upgrades to Shure Axient Digital
- Details
As part of its ongoing equipment life cycle management, the GCCEC has spent the last two years preparing and then rolling out changes and updates to all of its existing radio microphone and RF management equipment. With the Centre being a high-profile, high-density user, and the background RF environment of the Gold Coast notoriously difficult, it needed an RF solution that was robust, reliable, and delivered the finest audio.
After evaluating options through their supplier Brisbane Sound Group, and with technical advice and guidance from Jands, the Centre has deployed Shure Axient Digital radio microphone systems throughout the facility.
“Our radio mic replacement project was actually two projects that we ran in parallel,” explains Yuval Angel, AV production manager at GCCEC. “The first was to replace all of our roving, road-cased radio mic racks, and the second was to replace the site-wide radio mic system we use to cover the facility as a whole, including its spectrum management and networked audio distribution.”
“With the Centre needing to upgrade RF through the whole building, the high channel count, and the Gold Coast’s spectrum background, we felt that Shure Axient Digital was the only option,” shares Josiah Kerridge, sales specialist at Brisbane Sound Group. “We helped organise A/B testing against the incumbent radio mic brand, and the GCCEC staff decided that Shure Axient Digital represented a step above in both RF and sound quality. They ran a very thorough evaluation of all mic capsule options for the handheld transmitters and lapel mics for the bodypacks, which included the new Shure TwinPlex subminiature lavalier, which they’ve adopted as a premium option.”
The GCCEC has seven roving radio mic racks that are self-contained systems with four channels. Each rack consists of two handheld and two bodypack transmitters, mics, receiver, aerials, and network connectivity.
A further four racks have been fitted with an AD4D two channel receiver, two AD2 handheld transmitters with SM58 capsules, two AD1 bodypack transmitters with TwinPlex lavaliers, two UA874WB active directional antennas, and an SBRC battery charger.
At the heart of GCCEC’s radio mic system are two channels of ADX2 handheld transmitters designated as roving mics to cover the vast arena and exhibition hall spaces.
All systems are networked, and a central computer running Shure’s Wireless Workbench software sends a live scan to a screen in the AV storeroom that keeps techs updated on all RF activity in the building.
“The AXT600 Axient Spectrum Manager is the brain of our system,” says Yuval Angel. “It is continuously scanning the building and can assign frequencies to any Shure wireless equipment we’ve connected to our AV network. It takes the hard work out of managing RF, and is almost totally automated. We don’t need to constantly create new frequency plots when we get external parties like the media bringing in radios mics.
“We can make a plot in advance, and if anything is omitted or wrong, Axient Digital works around it. It’s always current and taking into account what’s in the space. When we have someone like media come in to the building that hasn’t let us know they’re using RF and what frequency they’re on, it manages it by itself.”
“The whole project has been completely stress-free,” adds Josiah Kerridge. “Even with the large scale and high channel count, Shure Axient Digital has been simple and reliable to deploy. The support from Jands has been great, and I think that Shure are the market leader in spectrum management.”
(Jim Evans)
