Among the most prestigious schools in Doha, the College of the North Atlantic Qatar (CNA-Q) has seen graduation of more than 4,000 alumni since 2002. Among its most impressive facilities is a world-class auditorium, recently refurbished with a full technical upgrade.

Related to the Canadian public school of the same name, the college has an ongoing programme of technical improvement. Over the past two years, updates have been made to every technical system within the auditorium, from projection and lighting to loudspeakers. The aim has been to create a venue capable of meeting a broad range of requirements. The auditorium now hosts spoken-word presentations, concerts by local musical acts and even touring theatrical productions.

Within the auditorium, Technical contractor Audio Visual Technology (AV Tech) knew that the overall system had to be easy-to-use and completely reliable, to accommodate a wide range of uses: ‘The college wanted the system to be simple,’ confirms AV Tech Technical Sales Manager, Mahmoud El Zein. Knowing he needed to use the most trustworthy signal processing technology available, he chose a Radius 12x8 DSP from Symetrix.

Accordingly, he designed a system using Renkus-HeinzIC-Live FR Dual loudspeakers, an Allen & Heath Qu-32 mixing console and Sennheiser microphones, all tied together by the Radius 12x8. ‘The entire I/O matrix within the venue, the routing of all inputs and outputs, is all through the Symetrix Radius 12x8,’ he explains. ‘You can trust Symetrix; their systems simply don’t fail.’

It’s not the first time that AV Tech has used Symetrix processing for a prestigious Qatar project: ‘We have been working with Symetrix for more than three years now, and I have used Symetrix products in mission critical areas of high-profile locations,’ El Zein confirms. ‘You can count on them.’