SITUATION
When operators Sun International embarked on the recent $100 million upgrade to the Boardwalk Complex in South Africa, they appointed QA Technology Consultants and Avitech Systems to engineer and install a new network-based background music and voice evacuation system that met the specific needs of the hotel, restaurant, casino, conferencing, and retail spaces. The previous sound system was installed in 1999 and consisted of racks of analog audio processing and routing hardware. The system was very difficult to maintain, and the operators were frequently spending money to have AV contractors travel to the site to configure the system for specific events.

SOLUTION

Avitech designed an integrated system using a combination of Biamp® products: Audia® DSPs provided the routing and control flexibility, while Vocia® provided the compliant voice evacuation functionality. Audia was installed in place of the previous analog system, consisting of old amplifiers and a loudspeaker network, which provided the client with daVinci™-based control pages on PCs and a wireless tablet.

CONCLUSIONS

The Avitech team used the AudiaFLEX for room combining, audio routing and source selection, which then fed background music channels to the Vocia system. Vocia processes the channel as a background priority, so it can override the music broadcast in the event of an emergency situation. This was the perfect solution for the client's needs, wrapped up into one complete system.