Florida Hialeach Park, which has the architectural clout to have seen it feature as a setting for Hollywood films such as The Godfather: Part II, has been transformed from a disused race track to the Hialeah Park Racing & Casino. The revamped facility incorporates a state-of-the-art sound system with SymNet Edge Dante networked audio DSPs at its core.
The venue pairs quarter horseracing with a casino built into the interior of the historic grandstand. It also “has nearly nine-hundred slots, twenty-three poker tables, and several restaurants and bars located across 150,000sqft,” according to Byard Hey, sales manager with NDR Systems, the Ft. Lauderdale integration firm that installed the new sound system. “They were very careful to restore all of the architectural motifs that make Hialeah Park such a regal place.”
Miami Beach, Florida-based Kinsella-Marsh Group, designed the system around a different processing arrangement. According to Hey the new SymNet Edge exceeded all of the design requirements for the project. The system features a modular I/O that could easily accommodate the lopsided I/O count of this job. Moreover, the SymNet Edge is based on the future-oriented Dante network, whereas the specified processor was based on the now-fading CobraNet technology.
Each SymNet Edge frame can be filled by up to four I/O cards. The available I/O cards cover the full range of possible I/O needs. For Hialeah Park Casino, Hey installed three four-Channel Analog Input Cards and seventy-five 4-Channel Analog Output Cards into twenty-two SymNet Edge frames. While each Edge frame has its own processing resources, the whole system acts as one integrated whole via the Dante network. Each speaker location includes a 5in loudspeaker, an 8in loudspeaker, and a subwoofer. All the components are Tannoy with the SymNet Edge processing turning each location into a three-way system. Lab.gruppen amplifiers are used for power.
“Dante is great, especially for this type of installation,” said Hey. “It’s a communications protocol of the future, which will make any future requests easy to accommodate. It has a dual network topology, which makes it more robust, and it is so easy simply to wire it all with Cat5 jumpers! The SymNet Composer software is intuitive and allows me to see the entire system or dig down as necessary. The casino has been up 24/7 for several months now without a hiccup.”
