A sizeable Peavey MediaMatrix system was chosen for Phase II of the A/V installation at the Qatar National Convention Centre (QNCC) has been completed, with the installation of a Peavey MediaMatrix system.
The project incorporates everything from BGM to broadcast and took almost two years for a 60-strong technical team to complete.
Presently one of the biggest A/V installations in the world, local systems integrator Techno Q is responsible for a system that allows the feeds to the centre’s exhibition halls, meeting rooms and public areas to be controlled both centrally and locally.
‘The project was highly complex,’ says Techno Q Projects Engineer, Ahmed Abdel Kader. ‘For MediaMatrix ,we are using CobraNet connecting each DSP and each Cab4 to the network, and then we send the audio through CobraNet.’
The seven halls of exhibition space cover 850m, and there are 42 separate meeting rooms and seven hospitality suites. These are served by JBL ceiling speakers powered by Lab.gruppen amplifiers, reqiring more than 250km of fibre-optic cabling to connects all systems to a central hub.
A ain control room runs the network, with a large-scale programming effort required for both the audio and visual systems. This translates into 82 Peavey MediaMatrix Nion n3s and 91 Cab 4n units with Crestron RoomView, which provide 2,760 channels of audio over CobraNet.
The system was split between DSP programming and control system programming, according to Techno Q control systems programmer, Rob Tognoli: ‘Audio and control work side-by-side, and the audio/DSP programming is a vital component,’ he says. ‘The Nions are the backbone of the system.’
Fifteen IDF rooms are located on the lower floor, with four IDFs controlling the meeting rooms, and a further three controlling centrally.
‘All of the [400] speakers had to have the same impedance,’ Kader says. ‘If you need the volume up in one area, it means the volume goes up for more than one circuit, so it required a lot of programming, as you don’t want the sound to be higher for one circuit than another.
‘One of the reasons we went with MediaMatrix is because it has good references from airports and these types of project,’ he adds. ‘They can combine the whole building so you can, for example, have one source and send it to any room.’
The central control room has three operators positions on its main console; each with a split screen for video production and a monitor to display content for any of the meeting rooms.
‘The HD cameras come through the multi-mode fibre to a receiver here and are converted to HD/SD-SDI and connected to the main router so you can route the signal to wherever you want,’ says Kader. ‘We can route any presentation from any room to any other; you can do the same thing with the audio signal.’
The room also has a diagnostics console, which provides an overview of each part of the system.
‘There is a graphic interface for the Crestron system, which makes it very intuitive,’ Kader says. ‘And there is a grid of the MediaMatrix, so you can view either an individual zone or all the zones at any time.’
’The very latest technology has been applied throughout this building and it s a very good design,’ Kader concludes. ‘As far as the ability to route any system anywhere – they have the capability to do just about anything you would expect in the 21st Century.’
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