Offering luxury accommodation, conference and theatre facilities Romania’s new five-star Hotel Nyota has its sights set on both tourism and business opportunities. In line with this strategy, its called on systems integrator AudioVision Store to provide extensive zoning and room audio systems.

With varied and sophisticated requirements, the hotel needed the A/V system to cover all areas of the hotel including conference facilities and a 70-seat theatre, with priority for EVAC announcements and both local and remote control of the zones. Though the best quality sound system was a must, AudioVision Store Sales & Marketing Manager Marius Craiu says that the hotel’s prime objective was for it to be simple to use and reliable.

With more than 80 loudspeakers in use throughout the venue, Craiu regarded the ‘only viable option’ was to use Powersoft Ottocanali power amplification systems. ‘We began working with the hotel before building was started and, although the initial specification was settled early on, there were inevitable modifications along the way,’ he says. ‘Fortunately, the Ottocanali range is well suited to system design changes on the fly.’

AudioVision was invited to specify the system by Low Voltage, the installation contractor with whom they had worked on many previous projects. Overall, the project took nearly four months to complete, taking place as the building work at the hotel – which is set between the Danube and the Black Sea, with stunning lakeside sunset views of Siutghiol Lake – was being finished.

‘The first request was to properly cover all the areas for music and messages and for some zones to also have the possibility to play music from a local source as well as centralised playback,’ Craiu says. ‘EVAC messages were to have the highest priority, and they also requested the ability to make announcements to different individual zones or all together. The conference rooms, named Blue and Moon, were to have their own independent sound systems which could be combined when the rooms were merged into one larger room.’

Ottocanali 4k4 models were specified by AudioVision, since they provided not only the ability to mix low- and high-impedance loudspeaker systems but full switched-mode PSU redundancy, assignable signal priorities for emergency messaging, digital signal processing allowing full equalisation of all loudspeakers and a programmable matrix, inside a space-saving and low power-consuming 2U-high rack of eight channels. Six of the channels were configured for low-impedance loudspeakers with the remaining two channels used for 100V line feeds.

For the two 16-seat conference rooms and terrace, Craiu specified Powersoft Duecanali 804 devices. The conference rooms can be used individually or combined into one 40-seat space, and the Duecanali models make that easily possible, additionally delivering outstandingly low power consumption and thermal dissipation as well as connecting to the backbone of the audio distribution system. Projection facilities can be linked directly to laptops and tablets via Bluetooth.

The control of the power platforms is handled by Powersoft’s Armonía software, which is used not only for the system design and set-up, but also provides simple control screens and can integrate with controllers from AMX and Crestron – for example, to make local use as easy as possible for non-technical operators. Different, password-protected views can be configured for different operators to manage specified zones and volume control.

‘The hotel doesn’t have its own sound engineers, but the IT staff are totally happy with the control systems we put in place for them,’ Craiu says, having set up the Operator view to a basic level (volumes for zones and sources). This can, however, easily be configured to provide additional functionality for technical staff.

Craiu notes that with 80 loudspeaker connections, there could have been significant fault-finding and measurement time, but Powersoft’s Live Impedance curve, an integral part of the Armonia software, made loudspeaker supervision easier and gave them more confidence. ‘I also added a backup priority signal for any situation,’ he says.

‘They have been running the system from the beginning of the summer season and they didn’t call me once, so no news is good news,’ he reports. ‘Now, they fully appreciate the quality of their amplifiers.’

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