Tuesday 2 February, which marked the start of last week’s ISE, was a red-letter day for Biamp for two reasons.
Not only did it mark the launch of its new Vocia networked paging and voice evacuation system, it was also the first day on the job for the company’s new president, Steve Metzger.
Vocia offers combined distributed processing and page routing, as well as networked audio and control. This networked and modular approach offers a number of advantages: the potential for a single point of failure is eliminated, and the system is readily scalable, from a single paging station and amplifier to multiple zones with several hundred inputs and outputs.
Vocia uses standard Ethernet networking technology and is CobraNet-enabled. Features include live, delayed and recorded announcements, message store and forward, system-wide alarms and event logging, as well as background music routing.
Vocia has already been installed at the Homebush Olympic Park in Sydney, Australia. The system handles site-wide paging and covers all public areas of the park. It is used for crowd control and egress announcements, as well as for background music broadcast to the public areas.
Steve Metzger succeeds Ralph Lockhart, who was president of the Oregon-based company for 25 years. Metzger has been with the company since 2000, and has served as business development manager and regional manager for in the southeastern region of the US. Most recently he was vice president of business development.
