October 17th was an important day for Vida Studio’s technical director, Italo Lazzerini, as he was able to celebrate the commissioning of a site-wide QSC Audio-based network system at Gardaland’s Audio Park in Verona.
This newly-designed system enables background music and generic announcements to be zoned and distributed by the QSC matrix over the complete 55-hectare area, with a greater degree of intelligibility.
The work is latest chapter in Vida Studios’ decade-long association with Italy’s biggest theme park, the complex owned and operated by Merlin Entertainments Group, (which also incorporates the 28th Sea Life, the world’s leading aquarium brand).
The Audio Park has proved to be something of a technical miracle. Thanks to the programmability of QSC’s NAC-100 System Controller (with color GUI), Vida Systems are not only able to tap into the QSC network control to undertake remote system diagnostics via IP – hundreds of miles away from their Milan offices – but control the system remotely in real time.
“For example, this morning we were able to relay instructions via the car telephone back to our office instructing them to change the volume levels in one zone and switch on another,” says Italo Lazzerini. “The system is always online and it will flag alerts immediately there is a problem.”
Gardaland’s audio technical manager, Lino Fasoli, confirmed that the upgrade to digital had also brought with it huge space saving: “At Gardaland we have been able to replace two large, tired 6m high analogue racks with just two QSC RAVE 522aa units and a NAC-100, offering us four different control presets , which is a very affordable option.”
In other words, two QSC BASIS devices, operating on the QSControl.net platform, has provided site-wide control, with much greater clarity.
This includes zones such as the popular African Island – a themed area which is populated by multiples of QSC AD-S82 and AD-S282 loudspeakers. In fact the music is themed for each of the territorial zones and stored on an Alcorn McBride player.
The Audio Park’s sound reinforcement is being similarly upgraded, and recently a QSC ISA 800T transformer amplifier and 14 AD-S82 loudspeakers were installed with the AD-YM8T yoke-mount system for the units containing transformers.
There are already well over 100 x 70v/100v line QSC loudspeakers operating in the park and as elements of the old public address systematically come up for renewal so Gardaland will move towards an eventual standardisation on QSC.
Aside from the Audio Park, a further QSC installation was carried out this summer with the introduction of ‘Mammut’, the biggest family roller coaster ride in Italy.
Vida Studio’s audio design for this ride incorporates an EN 60849-compliant background music and voice evacuation system, while at the hub is a Bouyer central unit and announcement microphone station, with fault report devices on output lines.
Purpose-created evac messages in several languages have been recorded ready for distribution via 14 QSC AD-S52T loudspeakers, strategically located around the ride (and in the station terminus).
Italo explained that QSC system components had originally found their way onto Vida Studio’s specification as a result of an excellent presentation made by distributors, AudioLink.
