Leading US A/V integration, design and engineering company, National Technology Associates (NTA) has chosen Waves Commercial Audio solutions for Todd English’s Olives, a new fine-dining venue in Las Vegas – installing a CA1000 Commercial Audio DSP at the Virgin Hotels Las Vegas venue.
NTA specialises in advanced A/V solutions for the gaming and hospitality industries and, for this project, worked with the venue ona multi-zone audio system for the restaurant and lounge areas that would be both aesthetically and acoustically pleasing to the patrons and live performers.
‘As this installation was a relatively small area in a fine-dining venue, we needed an intelligent way to automate audio processing for the performer, without physically having an engineer in the space,’ says NTA Senior Design Engineer, Joe Garcia Miranda. ‘Small designs, such as the restaurant and lounge at Todd English’s Olives, will often have smaller budgets than some of the larger venues we design. It’s always important that we spec products that have the best performance and versatility to fit within the budget.’
NTA installed the CA1000 DSP Engine to process microphone, instrument and playback audio sources – a decision that allowed it to be quickly adapted to changes requested during the deployment. ‘The venue had initially asked to support only an acoustic piano and a singer in the lounge,’ Garcia explains. ‘The entertainment that was eventually hired turned out to be more complex, however, with a varying cast performing everything from standards to modern pop. The typical set-up is a digital piano in a baby grand shell, backing tracks, and two singers; but this setup can vary. The versatility of the Waves CA1000 platform made it easy to adapt to all the variations thrown at us for successful deployment.’
The restaurant/lounge installation uses a Dante network: ‘I love the simplicity of using Waves with Dante without having to incorporate additional hardware,’ Garcia says. ‘Dante is the standard AoIP transport we use as designers working in a hybrid industry that merges commercial, hospitality and entertainment requirements. The CA1000’s easy integration with Dante was therefore a must-have feature for us.’
Garcia and NTA have been using Waves plug-ins for recording and production, as well as including Waves SuperRack in designs for larger installation projects. This experience helped Garcia adjust the factory-installed CA presets and customise them to the needs of the venue.
‘When you mention Waves is “under the hood”, musicians just light up because they know it guarantees top audio quality,’ he says, ‘For this installation, I created my own processing chains using the presets as a starting point. On vocal mics I set up a plug-in chain with the Primary Source Expander (PSE), Vocal Rider, F6 Floating Band Dynamic EQ, Sibilance, C6 Multiband Compressor and IR-Live Convolution Reverb. For keys I set up a chain with the F6 and MV2 plug-ins, and on the entertainer’s playback track I use the Playlist Rider and F6 plug-ins.’
NTA and the client are pleased with the installation and the resulting audio quality. ‘What’s most important, is that with the CA1000 in place, our client is happy with the quality of the sound, night after night,’ Garcia says.
