Crowds flock to Georgia’s Stone Mountain Park from Atlanta and the surrounding states to enjoy the park’s awe-inspiring geology and nature. In addition to a massive laser, fireworks, pyrotechnics, and projection show that has operated on summer evenings since 1983 and is almost synonymous with Stone Mountain Park,
The park’s attractions include the mountain itself, a massive laser, fireworks, pyrotechnics, and projection show that operates on summer evenings, camping, a cable car to the summit, a collection of historic plantation buildings, Geyser Towers playground, the Sky Hike family ropes adventure course, a children’s activity area, and Crossroads Base Camp, a town with restaurants, retail stores, a movie theater, mini-golf, and craft stores.
With so much going on, the owners of Crossroads hired Atlanta-based Full Spectrum to begin deploying a SymetrixSymNet Edge Dante networked audio DSP system that will grow and eventually expand to cover all of the park’s attractions via an inexpensive CAT5 network.
“The owners built Crossroads about a decade ago, and the original sound system did a passable job of supplying background music,” explained Paul Creasy, partner at Full Spectrum. “But as the development grew and several of the establishments set their sights on more and different events, the constraints of the original system became apparent.
“The upshot was that they needed something that was completely flexible. Moreover, the owners wanted to expand system coverage to several of the other attractions, but they didn’t want to have to start from scratch every time they expanded. The Symetrix SymNet Edge DSP system offered the perfect solution.
“Each Edge frame has modular I/O, and its open architecture programming allows us to customize system features and performance. The fact that the Edge DSP system networks via Dante will allow us to easily expand across the park.”
Currently, eight SymNet Edge frames populate Crossroads, each in a different building.
“We do niche A/V,” said Creasy. “You can’t call up a preset for a place like Stone Mountain Park. I appreciate the flexibility and intuitive layout of SymNet Composer open architecture software. It’s easy to work with, even with a complex system like this one. Moreover, any time I have a question, Symetrix’ tech support is available and ready with an answer.”
Within the next year, Full Spectrum plans to expand the sound reinforcement system via Dante and additional remote Edge DSP units to incorporate the Plantation, the Sky Ride cable car complex, and, perhaps most exciting, Stone Mountain’s famous laser show.