CASE STUDY: LARGE VENUE AUDIO SYSTEM

Magness Sound has had a working relationship with The Auckland Trotting Club since theearly 1950’s. The initial system improvement carried out by Roly Magness was to increase the number of speakers from four to eight! Over the years there have been many upgrades and improvements as the venue is re-imagined and developed. Recent estimates now put the speaker count upwards of 180.

The Auckland Trotting Club was founded in 1890 and is one of Auckland’s leading horse racing venues. The site which provided earliest racecourse competition was on the property of the Potter family, who became managers for the base of the trams and the draught horses which pulled them - hence 'Potter Paddock' and 'Tramways Corner'. Blessed with the bulk of the nation's population to draw on, the Auckland Trotting Club has steadily gone from strength to strength, featuring weekly race nights of Harness racing competitions. Alexandra Park Function Centre, located in the grounds of the Auckland Trotting Club is one of Auckland's prime function venues and has a choice of seven rooms catering for between 50 and 500 guests with individually tailored menus and packages, and free car parking for up to 1700 vehicles with easy access from both the Auckland CBD and motorways.

One of the biggest upgrades at Alexandra Park Function centre and The Auckland Trotting Club was the installation of the first BSS Soundweb London system in New Zealand. Magness Sound selectedtheSoundweb London solution as the foundation for its audio distribution requirements. The main selection factors were its power, scalability and user defined control parameters.

Peter Magness approached J-Pro NZ (at the time known as JANDS NZ)with the initial design requirements for the project which incorporated existing amplifiers and speakers. Magness Sound has been the sound contractor to the Auckland Trotting club for over 70 years and was looking for a very flexible, easy to use, distributed audio system using the latest technology. The requirement was for multi-room individual systems integrated with a venue wide system using a standard digital audio transmission protocol such as Cobranet. Of great importance was the ability of local controls to be monitored and adjusted from a central control room. The combination of London Architects monitoring, logic and preset setups met and exceeded the requirements of the Technical staff, Function Centre staff and the Racing Clients.

The Soundweb London system is at the heart of the new audio network and incorporates the background music system, conference centre functions and race night audio for Auckland Trotting Clubs seven conference rooms, bars, main audience stands and function areas. The venue is spread over five levels with four BLU-80 and one BLU-32 processors located around the venue. Eight BLU-10 remotes are located in each conference area and allows volume control and music sources to be selected, additionally each room has four to eight local inputs that can be configured by the conference staff for functions and events. These local inputs are configured so they take priority over the background music source that is currently playing. All audio is transmitted digitally over the audio network using Cobranet, linking a Yamaha LS9 mixing console at the heart of the system with multiple Yamaha and BSS DSP boxes. The system is configured so that a total of sixty eight inputs and seventy six outputs are distributed around the venue. There are currently a variety of Bose and JBL speaker systems meeting the requirements of the various indoor spaces and TOA horn Speakers and Bose 402 speakers serving the track and outer terrace zones

In addition to the conference centre inputs, there is a sound control room from where technical staff mix the various track and race commentary feeds to both broadcast and venue distribution. The HiQnet London Architect software’s comprehensive logic and preset recall facilities have been configured to allow the technicians to assign specific race and program material to each of the venue rooms or public areas over the course of a race night. The technicians also have access to a full PFL monitoring system so that any input and output can be listened to from a local speaker in the control room.