Meetings Streamlined and Broadcast Thanks to Council Chamber AV Overhaul

ITAV Solutions’ role was system design and implementation. For video, four display screens show content from a dedicated control station which a laptop can be plugged into. Each station has a video input for council members as well as a guest at the podium to drive content to the system as well. A Crestron control system with a dedicated iPad controls the system and what content is onscreen. All audio and video gets sent to a Sony Anycast all-in-one broadcast system, and an employee mans the encoder, recorder and streamer to be published immediately.

The audio rack at the Airport Authority consists of two Symetrix Radius DSPs and Symetrix Edge Frame, with twelve AEC cards, and four outputs with an additional two extender boxes. Resulting in what becomes essentially 32 outputs.

“They gave us criteria of what they were trying to accomplish – microphones for all the council members, streaming capabilities, telecomm capabilities, speech reinforcement, video switching, control – we took all the meetings and talks and put together the parts and pieces that gave them what they asked for,” says Lopez.

Lopez had had quite a bit of experience with Symetrix in the past, and after coming off a project in an educational setting in which a number of Symetrix products were used he ultimately decided that Symetrix digital signal processors would be best for the council chamber at the Airport Authority. Edge accommodates complex I/O requirements, while Radius serves as a universal DSP building block with an option card slot maximizing the number of input or outputs in a 1U DSP form factor. The Radius AEC provides crisp sound for voice and conferencing, which fit well in the space.

The open architecture design of the Symetrix products allowed for flexibility and scalability when implementing the overall AV solutions. Due to the fact that the space was rather large, the need for audience members to hear the goings-on of the meetings, the number of committee members and participants that required personal microphones, and the need to record audio signals, ITAV needed an audio rack that could accommodate the various audio signals coming in and out of the system. They found that Symetrix was the best fit, and the Airport Authority has been pleased with the results of the system.

“[The Airport Authority] is very satisfied with how everything sounds and how everything works,” says Lopez.