Windsor, California-based RCA Integrated Systems, an electrical and integration company in Napa Valley, had been working on a 15,000 square- foot smart-home project on the estate of a well-known winery and vineyard. With pro-AV supply chain issues over the last 18 months, RCA was introduced to the Connect Series from LEA Professional to provide amplification to this residential install.
The main focus of the new home’s design was to feature an integrated audio system with enough quality, power, and control to host special events and parties and to cover both indoor and outdoor spaces. Jason Nelson, AV Project Manager for RCA Integrated Systems, explained that his company began working on the final phase of the installation earlier this year.
The RCA team was under pressure to get a set of audio zones operational for an important event the customer was hosting. “I was frustrated, trying to find amps, and I then I get a call from John Hernandez, our manufacturers’ rep at LVX Marketing who says that they have a new line of amps they wanted to show us,” said Nelson. “He told me a bit about LEA amplifiers and sent me a specification sheet. It was the exact type of amp we had been searching for, and best of all, they were in stock and ready to ship.”
Nelson explained that typically they use multimode type amplifiers because of their versatility. This approach helps keep their installations clean and organized. Power output is also very important. The RCA team usually specifies amps of 700 watts and above to appropriately power larger residential systems with headroom to spare. Nelson ordered and installed a set of five, Connect 704D amplifiers from LEA Professional to meet these specifications.
The Connect Series is a commercial-grade audio amplifier family suited for small to medium-scale installations. Featuring three ways to connect, users can engage the built-in Wi-Fi access point, connect to the venue’s Wi-Fi, or use the FAST Ethernet to connect to any local area network via Cat5 or Cat6 cable. The Connect Series also features cloud connectivity allowing users utilize the cloud for remote control, monitoring, configuration, and more from any personal device. The Connect Series also features HiZ and LoZ channel selectable analog inputs, Dante inputs, and external I/O control for remote on/off and fault monitoring.
“This home has extensive interior and exterior audio program requirements, and with the LEA amps in place, we now have many of the zones operational, and it’s been great so far,” said Nelson.
For the loudspeakers, RCA installed a combination of in-ceiling, wall mount, and subwoofer speakers from Sonance Professional internally. For the landscape zones, they used a mix of environmental systems from James Loudspeaker.
“We’re using analog inputs from the audio sources, but we’re also using all the web-based features that the LEA amps have built-in,” said Nelson. “It’s so cool to be able to hop on a smartphone or iPad — even if we don’t have our network going or everything plugged in — and we can connect to the amps and configure them.”
