Officially opened in December of last year, the Qatar National Convention Centre (QNCC), Doha, Qatar – FIFA’s chosen country for the 2022 World Cup – is an expansive high-tech facility, featuring AV systems complete with a Peavey MediaMatrix DSP audio control solution. The exhibition space spans seven halls, totaling 850sqm. The facility features 42 separate meeting rooms and seven hospitality suites, and is fitted with more than 250km of fibre optic cable, which runs throughout the building to connect AV systems to a central hub. Despite the need for central control, local management of equipment in the building’s three main areas – exhibition halls, meeting rooms, and connecting public areas – was also a key requirement for systems integrator Techno Q. A central control room manages the entire network, while a total of 15 IDF (Intermediate Distribution Frame) rooms, which are located on the bottom floor, allow local control of the AV equipment, with four IDFs controlling the meeting rooms, and a further three controlling centrally. Equalisation for each room was also done by Techno Q, and controls each circuit within the building.
Some 82 Peavey MediaMatrix NION n3s and 91 Cab 4n DSP units with Crestron’s AV management suite, RoomView, were deployed in the facility. The DSPs provide 2,760 channels of audio, all of which are run over CobraNet for the 400 speakers placed within he facility. The system itself is split out between DSP programming and control system programming. Ahmed Abdel Kader, projects engineer at Techno Q, explains: “All the [400] speakers had to have the same impedance. “There are so many circuits, so if you need the volume up in one area it means the volume goes up for more than one circuit, so it requires a lot of programming, as you don’t want the sound to be higher for one circuit than another.” The central control room has three mix positions on its main console; each one has a split-screen for video production and a monitor to display content for any of the meeting rooms. “All the HD cameras come through the multi-mode fibre to a receiver here and are converted to HD/SD-SDI and connected to the main router so you can route the signal to wherever you want,” says Kader. “We can route any presentation from any room to any other; you can do the same thing with the audio signal.” The room also boasts a diagnostics console, which allows the operator an overview of each part of the system. “There is a graphic interface for the Crestron system, which makes it very intuitive,” Kader continues. “And there is a grid of the MediaMatrix, so you can view either an individual zone or all the zones at any time.” www.peavey.com
