Martin Dawes Solutions and POLARaudio have installed a public address and background music system for Parc Eirias, a newly developed £6.5m multi-purpose venue in Colwyn Bay, North Wales. Parc Eirias is a newly developed £6.5m multi-purpose venue for community, cultural and sporting events in Colwyn Bay, North Wales. Opened in November 2011, Parc Eirias is a cornerstone of the regeneration plans for the area. The large indoor centre includes conference and classroom facilities for business and commerce events, an indoor training ground, gym, high performance sports analysis facilities and an international standard pitch. The site incorporates two grandstands offering covered seating for up to 2580 people and terracing for a further 3500, a hi-tech TV broadcast room, two commentator boxes and nine multi-purpose units which are used for conferencing and hospitality on match days. The venue recently put on its first major events, hosting the Six Nations under 20s tournament home matches and the Olympic torch relay celebrations. Leading integrator Martin Dawes Solutions, in conjunction with POLARaudio, was commissioned by the Conwy County Borough Council to provide a complete public address and background music system for the site. The system was to span across all areas of the venue including the indoor and outdoor grandstands, training ground, changing rooms, bar, conferencing facilities, medical room and all the areas in between. Paul Berry, audio visual solutions architect at Martin Dawes and Mark Bromfield, business development manager at POLARaudio set about developing a system that would provide the hi-tech facility a seamless audio solution. The scheme incorporated background music and public address systems with the facility for complete system-override for match days, all controlled with Bi-amp Da Vinci graphic control screen software. Three Bi-amp Audiaflex mainframe DSPs with Cobranet are at the heart of the system, one situated in the plant room, a second in one of the two commentator boxes and the third in the TV broadcast room. Bi-amp RED-1 remote wall panel controls are situated around the site to control the source and volume, one in each of the multi-purpose units, the gym, bar area, TV comms rooms and home changing rooms. The system is powered by six Australian Monitor AMIS-250P units, six AMIS-480P power amplifiers power the 100V line speakers and 10 Australian Monitor XA-1400 power amplifiers run the 12-inch two-way speakers in the grandstand and indoor training facility. Over 70 Australian Monitor AM20 CS 100V ceiling speakers are situated around the stadium providing background music and sound for general announcements. The speakers are positioned in the corridors, multi-purpose units, bar area, changing rooms and medical centre. Weatherproof speakers are sited in the two grandstands to provide audio for the seated and terrace spectators. The client required the facility to page from multiple areas of the stadium, so Martin Dawes fitted Bi-amp NPS-1 paging stations in the TV comms room, reception, both commentator boxes and the medical centre to provide this functionality. The TV comms room also boasts two live feeds to the BBC and the commentator boxes are facilitated with a host of hi-end broadcast equipment including beyerdynamic DT-797PV double-sided commentator headsets, beyerdynamic NE 9000D wireless microphone system complete with handheld and lavalier microphone options. The install was completed with three third-party LCD screens in the gym and two 60-inch LCDs in the bar areas. “As the site is a brand new facility hosting new events, the main challenge on this project (apart from the short installation timescale) was to create a flexible and powerful system that is easy to use, can be quickly adapted to meet the fluid operational requirements of a new facility, and allows expansion for the future,” said Paul Berry. “Bi-amp provides an excellent solution. The local control from RED-1s and global control via Da Vinci provide the balance between ease of use and the operational flexibility required with hosting large outside events.” www.polaraudio.co.uk
