PSAV Presentation Services provides the hospitality industry with the tools and technology for meetings.
This includes incorporating fully-integrated, forward-looking technology solutions for its installations at hotel partners across the United States.
As Symetrix fixed-architecture and SymNet open-architecture DSP solutions have advanced, PSAV has kept up, offering clients ever-greater functionality and performance for ever-less money.
Project Manager Matt Keene of PSAV has begun to include Symetrix’ latest offerings – the Axiomtek touch-panel PC and the latest version of SymVue user-control software for new design and installation projects.
In addition, Keene is retrofitting older Symetrix and SymNet installations with the Axiomtek, which provides an even greater degree of sophisticated, yet intuitive, control to the end user.
Recently Keene utilized the Symetrix technology to deliver upon an upgrade project. “Even though our latest proposal was for much less money than an earlier one, we were able to deliver a lot more functionality,” said Keene.
The system covered a ballroom, which could be divided into separate meeting rooms, as well as two additional physically separate meeting rooms. Powered by QSC eight-channel CX108V amplifiers, Bose Freespace 102F loudspeakers cover the spaces with an even distribution.
Each room contains local inputs of between two and four ELRs mixed by a Crown 28M. A Symetrix ARC-SWK wall panel controller in each of the six spaces selects between the local inputs and various DMX background music sources and controls their overall volume.
A Symetrix Room Combine 788 forms the heart of the system. “I use the SymNet open architecture units when necessary, but for simple systems, the Symetrix Integrator series is the way to go,” said Keene.
“The price is right, the functionality is all there, and the programming time is quick.” The Room Combine 788 is capable of full auto-mixing and signal processing of twelve inputs (including four background music sources) into as many as eight rooms with full loudspeaker conditioning.
Like all Symetrix and SymNet products, it can be controlled by Symetrix ARC wall panels, SymVue user control software (either on a touch-screen PC, like the Axiomtek, or a regular PC), or third-party controllers.
In this example, Keene reserved the ARC-SWK wall panels for source selection and volume control only, placing the Axiomtek touchscreen PC in the equipment room for all room combine/uncombined control. “Most hotels require some amount of room combining,” said Keene.
“It can be challenging to add that additional layer of control without overwhelming a novice user with complexity. I’ve found that when I make room combine/uncombined functionality available in the space, users can sometimes mistakenly make changes when all they really want to do is change the volume.”
“With the Axiomtek touchscreen PC, I simply place a map of the room on the screen with intuitive ‘combine’ and ‘uncombine’ buttons, and then it’s as simple as it can possibly be.”