The World of Speed museum, located near Portland, Oregon has been equipped with multiple AV systems managed by Symetrix Radius 12×8 EX digital signal processors.
The museum features classic race cars, motorcycles, and boats and also offers automotive classes, simulators and interactive exhibits.
“Currently the museum has 11 spaces, and they are expanding,” said Michael Sanders of Portland-area systems integrator Delta AV, which designed and installed the facility’s AV systems. “We initially looked at the museum’s system as a whole and went through each system individually and broke it down into its components. We then designed an AV system that could be controlled from a touch panel or iPad app from pretty much anywhere in the facility. We made it as future-proof and expandable as possible.”
The building already had CAT5 Ethernet cable throughout, which gave Sanders’ team an advantage. “We are controlling multiple systems with Symetrix Radius DSP, which interfaces with Dante networks,” Sanders explained. “Leveraging the existing network cabling, we installed Dante boxes around the facility, which enables the museum to have a press feed or to plug in from remote locations. We worked closely with the network contractor to build a VPN that lives on their network, but is mostly separate from it. That allowed us to use the Dante network and any of the controls so that anything we’re doing, including video and audio transmission, is on the existing network.”
For an exhibit about Utah’s famed Bonneville Salt Flats, where land speed records are often broken, the museum staff wanted to show a car speeding across the salt flats. It’s accomplished with an eight-projector videowall 130ft wide by 12ft tall that displays a seamless image that scrolls across the entire width of the screen. A Radius 12×8 EX DSP manages eight audio zones so that as the image scrolls, audio signals ‘travel’ along with the image, giving an aural, as well as visual, representation of a car hurtling across the Salt Flats.
Additionally, a Radius 12×8 EX unit manages the audio for a drive-in theatre with a 25ft screen, and a Radius 12×8 EX also handles audio for the museum’s large boardroom, which is rented to corporations for videoconferences. Included are four Dante-enabled paging zones within the museum, all managed by Radius DSPs so the system can be controlled from anywhere.
On the interactive Wall of Sound, Sanders commented: “It’s an exhibit about the relationship between cars and music. The Wall of Sound uses a Brown Innovation directed-energy speaker with an NEC 32in monitor and a motion sensor. As you walk by the exhibit, the system starts playing one of eight or nine songs and videos about cars. They range from the first rock ‘n’ roll car song, Jackie Brenston and Ike Turner’s 1951 ‘Rocket 88,’ through ZZ Top hits of the 1980s. The content is driven by a BrightSign interactive media player, and of course the audio is managed with a Radius.”
