The recently renovated 15th Judicial Circuit of Florida West County Courthouse in Belle Glade needed an AV solution to manage multiple microphones and a plethora of audio, video, and teleconferencing equipment. In addition, court proceedings are commonly recorded.
Managing all those audio feeds required a sophisticated processing system with the ability to interact seamlessly with other equipment—challenges met by Lectrosonics ASPEN processors.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL-based NDR Corporation, a design/build firm providing turnkey AV installations, was contracted to handle the West County Courthouse’s facility upgrade. Specifically, NDR deployed SPN1624 ASPEN processors, SPN16i ASPEN 16-input expansion units, SPNConference ASPEN telephone conferencing processors, and PA8 8-channel power amplifiers.
“This was an involved project,” states NDR sales manager Byard Hey, “The job involved two courtrooms and two hearing rooms. In each of the two courtrooms and one of the hearing rooms, we deployed the same setup, which included the ASPEN SPN1624, the SPN16i input expander, the SPNConference processor, and two PA8 power amps.
“The second hearing room used the same equipment—minus the SPN16i expander, as this space required fewer audio inputs.”
Unattended operation was another primary aspect of this job, as was the ability of the ASPEN processors to operate as an integral part of the managing Crestron control system. In each of the rooms, the judge has a touch panel controller for making changes to various aspects of the system and there is also a wall panel for the bailiff to interact with the equipment if necessary.
“The ASPEN system is set up for automixing,” Hey explains, “with an average of thirteen microphones in each space, as well as audio from portable AV sources such as laptop computers, video conferencing, telephone conferencing, audio recording, and video follow audio for camera initiation. All of these feeds are handled through the Lectrosonics ASPEN family of products.
“I’ve been very impressed with the ASPEN equipment, particularly the automixing process with mix-minus functionality, which is applied for each ceiling speaker associated with an open microphone in close proximity. Equally important on this project was the system’s expansion capability, as this was what enabled us to accommodate all the mic inputs and the additional AV and conferencing audio inputs.”
While configuring and controlling the ASPEN processing system is quite intuitive, Lectrosonics does offer training to help integrators get up to speed with the equipment. Hey took advantage of that training.
“I attended a one week class at Lectrosonics’ headquarters in preparation for this project,” says Hey, “and my lead technician had experience with other Lectrosonics equipment. Throughout the project and during final commissioning, my tech spoke with Lectrosonics’ support staff and, in each case, had a very positive experience.
“We’ve always had a great relationship with Lectrosonics and these factors explain our continued and repeat purchases of their equipment. Lectrosonics provides the right products at competitive pricing with responsive support services—and this helps NDR Corporation protect the reputation we have worked so hard to attain.”