The Bangkok headquarters of TMB – previously known as the Thai Military Bank – is a 33-story building with a 500-seat multi-purpose auditorium on its seventh floor that hosts conferences, press events, live music and more, and it was recently outfitted with a new AV system with an Audinate Dante networking backbone.
“The auditorium at TMB sees some very diverse use and it gets quite busy,” says Alfonso Martin, head engineer at Sonos Libra, the contracting firm that designed and installed the Dante-based audio network. “We knew from the start that the AV system needed to be cutting edge, it needed to be scalable and it needed to be high quality. When we submitted a bid to upgrade the facility, we knew from the start it needed to be done with Dante.”
Martin believes his company won the bid in part because they can offer Dante capabilities. “It may seem a bit strange at first to think of a bank seeking out this level of audio capability,” he notes. “But banks are associated with having extremely impressive technology, not just related to their banking, but in all levels of their work.”
Martin explains that the bank required a customizable system as the auditorium occasionally needs to reposition its equipment. Further, the system needed to be capable of a quick upgrade if a demand for such a change arose. Specifically, Martin says, the system needed to be capable of adding additional remote I/Os. The audio also needed to reach other areas of the building outside the auditorium – such as allowing announcements to take place in the lobby.
“In addition to those needs they obviously wanted a system that had extremely high-quality sound,” he says. “We needed to make sure it was ready for all types of use and that if a microphone needed to be added it could happen quickly and easily.”
By building out a Dante audio network, Martin and his team helped ensure that the bank can quickly alter the configuration of equipment by simply plugging into an available network port. Patch panels can also be quickly set up.
A Dante network can also help reduce the interoperability challenges due to the more than 2,000 products that are now Dante native. And, because the network reaches beyond the auditorium, the ability to add sound to other areas of the facility is realized without additional cable pulls.
The team has installed the following Dante-enabled components to the workflow thus far:
2 Lab.gruppen D80 amplifiers
1 Lab.gruppen D120 amplifier
1 Allen & Heath DM0 rack with new 64×64 Dante Cards @ 96kHz
6 Xilica Rio R22-WP-X in-wall Dante I/O panels
1 computer with Dante Virtual Soundcard
Martin expects more Dante=enabled components will be added as the facility continues to host additional events.
“The sound has been improved significantly,” he concludes. “And it really is a system that solves all the problems. They can easily press a pre-programmed button to host an event. They can utilize a plug-and-play system to add more devices. It’s very much a thing of beauty to see a Dante system in use like this, and seeing the customer being so happy with the results.”
