After recommending the upgrade of the Cloverdale sound system back in 2016, Sound Solutions was awarded the job in March of 2019.
The existing sound system was an elaborate digital signal processor based system, and the installation was well executed at the opening of the building in 2011. Five years after opening, in 2016, the microphone jacks started to fail. The Cloverdale rec centre used a series of networked microphone jacks, which sends audio over a CAT5 cable, and a digital network, rather than more traditional analog lines. In large venues such as stadiums and conference centers, this network method works exceptionally well, however the microphone jack panels are prohibitively expensive, at around $800 per plate, compared to the more standard $30-50 per analog mic jack. Since the Cloverdale rec centre had 22 of these panels, a failure every 3-6 months became cost prohibitive to maintain. To make matters worse, the Cobranet based networked mic panels were discontinued in 2018, as the Cobranet protocol was phased out in favor of the more popular Dante network used today.
In addition, the existing DSP system started to exhibit intermittent audio ‘ghosting’, where the music from one room would faintly appear in other areas at random. A reboot and reloading of the programming did not solve the issue, so it was apparent that the main DSP units needed to be changed out.
Sound Solutions recommended that all existing amplifiers and speakers be retained, as they were in good condition, and only the main DSP unit and mic plates were to be changed out. Future amplifier and speaker failures would be addressed as they occurred, but we expected them to last another 5-10 years.
In June of 2019, Sound Solutions installed a new QSC Core 110f digital signal processor along with a touch screen, and two QSc I/O-8 Flex expansion units, to provide a 20 input, 20 output audio matrix. The installation took place over 3 days, during the annual rec centre shut-down, and the old system was pulled out, and the new QSC system was installed. We simplified several of the old system’s functions, such as changing the number of paging zones from 23 areas to 3, plus an all-page. In the history of the rec centre, paging into 23 individual zones was not required, so these zones were eliminated.
We also installed 19 of the popular Factor microphone plates. These plates used the existing CAT5 cables going back to the main rack, eliminating the need to run new wiring. Each room has the ability to now plug a mic or music source into the sound system, with local volume control in each room. In addition, most rooms now have local control of the background music of the building, allowing music to be played when a function was not occurring in any of the rooms.
We added an auxiliary music jack at the main sound system rack, so that a CD player or MP3 player could be plugged in as desired, as an alternate background music source.
The installation went flawlessly, with no disruption of classes, and was completed within 3 days.
July 2019 – We recently received an email form this very happy customer … “The sound system has been great so far. Staff are learning and there have been comments that the system and operation are better than before.”
