Quesnel Pool

The Solution

New digital signal processor, updated connections.

Sound Solutions Inc was invited to provide an RFP to install a new sound system into the Quesnel Pool in the summer of 2015. The existing system consisted of a variety of sound systems installed by several sound companies, including 20-year-old amplifiers and speakers, and a $100 amplifier that claimed to provide “1200 watts of professional power” to two speakers. A home-made “mystery box” controlled the paging system, and the sound equipment was stuffed into a computer server rack, not really designed for sound equipment. Not much of the wiring was labeled, and the sound system was cutting in and out and not providing consistent sound throughout the pool and other recreation rooms.

We visited beautiful Quesnel to present the staff with an on-site demo of the Community R series weatherproof speakers, and even a single Community speaker outperformed the existing main pair of speakers covering the lap pool for both paging and music quality. We were awarded the job in late summer of 2015, and completed the installation over a four day period.

We chose to use a Lectrosonics DM1612 digital signal processor, which controlled the routing and signal flow of the various music sources as well as a main paging mic located at the front desk. When a page was made, the  music would mute only in the areas where paging was to be heard, and the music would resume when  the paging was completed. There are a number of independent music systems in the Quesnel Rec Centre, including the pool, the arts centre and the multipurpose rooms, yet the paging mic can work in each zone along with an all-page, and the lobby speakers can be tied to the pool system with the push of a button  for swim meets that take place several times a year.

During installation, it was apparent that the existing speakers installed in the arts centre side of the recreation facility were the wrong type, as the last contractor had attempted to correct the speaker overload problem by putting transformers on the back of the server rack (with a rat’s nest of wiring under the rack). This required us to make a second trip to Quesnel to install 15 new speakers and the correct commercial grade volume controls into the various rooms. In addition, we found that the weight room speakers were at the end of their life, as the woofer cones were rattling.

Replacing the paging and weight room speakers with new ones brought all the paging zones to life, and the sound quality was significantly improved in the weight room.