In order to keep up with the demands of the international business community, seeking ever more sophisticated AV facilities within their premium four- and five-star hotels, the Radisson Edwardian Group are developing extended and technically advanced conference spaces, with provision to show HD content to large groups, and host video-conferencing forums.
Over the past few years their project technical team, including IT director Abraham and Technical Services Manager, Scott Bradley, have been working with integrators, Visual Systems Sales Ltd (part of Myriad Audio Visual Group), to evolve the concept for their principle theatres, and this includes a pristine audio signal path, delivered by the proprietary BSS Soundweb London digital processing.
As a result, the master scheme created for the five-star May Fair Hotel, is now being rolled out, and this month Visual Systems project consultant Ray Sappal was able to commission the technical refit of the reconfigurable Folio Suite and six Private Rooms a few miles across London at the Bloomsbury Street Hotel.
To meet a large percentage of their audio requirements Visual Systems Sales have turned to Harman Pro distributors, Sound Technology, to ensure that the soundtrack, streamed from 8 Track Music Solutions servers, is optimally processed in the BSS Soundweb London environment.
At The May Fair Hotel five Soundweb London BLU-16’s process the feeds, which are output to a pair of Crown 8-channel CTs 8200 8-channel amplifiers and other third party devices before being played out through a total of some 164 JBL Control 26C in-ceiling speakers.
All the Soundwebs are identically-configured, 4-in, 12-out, to feed 11 Private Suites, as well as larger meeting rooms, the Crystal banqueting room (which has its own dedicated BLU-16) and the Mez Bar. In total, 22 zones are fed by the Soundwebs, each zone with its own local rotary pot volume control.
The Crystal Room also has a wired microphone point connected to the BLU-16, with local gain control.
Said Ray Sappal, “We have been using Soundweb for six years and we love its reliability and the fact you can alter the programmes easily via the network or remotely. Once programmed they are very robust and will run 24/7. We programmed the Soundweb gain structure with preset levels to ensure the dynamics are optimised.”
Soundweb is also used to switch the Control 26C speakers in combination — feeding some with the site-wide piped music and others with the local sound.
“We like these speakers because of the power handling capability. They are full range, offer good response and come with built-in fire domes. It’s why we picked them and they work very well.”
Scott Bradley says that the work at the May Fair has formed part of a £70m refit carried out over the past three years at the famous hotel (which also hosts a 201-seat raked Mayfair Theatre).
“We have the capability to cater for groups as small as four up to a meeting space for 300 people — and for any type of event, conference, cabaret, class room.”
He also backed the JBL solution. “I have experienced a lot of installations using JBL components over the years, so when it came to putting in speakers here we knew the Control 26’s would be the perfect solution — particularly considering the low ceiling height and need for optimum quality.
“We also rely on Soundweb to handle the signal processing and function as a matrix router, piping the music round the building from a central point; this it does superbly.”
The technical architecture at the nearby Bloomsbury Street Hotel follows a similar model to The May Fair — with certain advantages. As a result of a £25m overhaul, Bloomsbury Street has become the only hotel in the UK to boast HD and Blu-ray facilities throughout all its conference spaces, while the main Folio Suite can be reconfigured as a single 300-capacity room or as three separate spaces, using room dividers.
All the audio dynamics are programmed into a pair of Soundweb London BLU-16s which can switch the JBL Control 26C room speakers between the piped system and the local sound source. Once again, a microphone point is connected to the BLU-16 in the Folio Suite with local gain control.
Technical Services Manager, Amar Sira states that Soundweb comfortably deals with all the hotel’s audio distribution requirements. “As for the Folio Suite, this contains five differently-oriented projectors, which can be used depending on the room configuration. With full video conferencing and HD facilities — plus the aid of scan converters, scalers and switchers — we can offer our customers a lot of different scenarios.”
