With the ability to deliver high-end presentations, press conferences and live streams integral to its plans, Belgium’s largest telecom provider, Proximus, identified the need to upgrade its auditorium’s aging in-house mixing system, with Brussels-based pro-audio distributor XLR responding with a design utilizing an Allen & Heath Avantis 64-channel/32-bus mixer with a 96 kHZ FPGA core and a range of I/O options that’s capable of handling multiple types of audio sources — both on-site and from OB trucks.
With a pair of 128-channel digital I/O ports available on the mixer, a Dante I/O card was chosen for the first port to enable integration into the building’s Dante network. This also allowed XLR and Proximus to tap into Allen & Heath’s “Everything I/O” ecosystem of remote audio expanders, which includes Dante options.
Two DT168 Dante audio expanders, connected via pair of Cisco Catalyst switches, were installed in the main rack for interfacing with wireless microphones, lectern mics, and analog audio sources. In addition, a DT164-W Dante audio expander was installed in an onstage floor pocket to accommodate floor inputs/outputs, plus another DT164-W at the rear of the room for press I/O. All video sources have their audio streams fed into the system via Dante, utilizing the Analog Way Aquilon display management system. For the second I/O port, a 128-channel SuperMADI card was chosen to facilitate connection to OB trucks, with both BNC and SFP connectivity on offer for maximum flexibility.
Despite not having used Avantis before, the Proximus AV team was able to quickly set up a comprehensive routing scheme utilizing the 42 configurable mix buses, with the entire system was programmed and ready for showtime in less than 3 days from unpacking.
“The Allen & Heath Avantis and its paired expanders are the ideal choice for our upgrade of the mixing facilities and auditoriums. It produces great audio quality, has an easy-to-use interface with easy recall of all parameters, great expansion capabilities, custom console layouts, and provides all this in a fast workflow” says Marc Bauwens, Senior Engineer and Audio-visual Project Manager at Proximus. “Allen & Heath and XLR, our local distributor, provided us with great assistance throughout the whole build and integration process.”
