BJ’s Bingo & Gaming

COMPANY: LEA Professional LOCATION: Washington, USA

When BJ’s Bingo & Gaming in Fife, Washington, began expanding its facility last year, it decided to upgrade and integrate its entire AV system. BJ’s management worked with Tacoma-based AT Productions, who called on LEA Professional to amplify the facility’s many rooms and spaces.

“BJ’s is technically a bingo hall, but it’s huge and is operated like a casino with bingo, slot rooms, restaurants, bars, a cigar lounge, and many other rooms and spaces,” said Austin Taylor, Founder and Owner of AT Productions.

To best cover and manage the AV for the large, multi-use facility, the team designed a 50-zone, 70V, distributed system. AT Productions worked with Seattle based professional sales partner Brownestone who recommended LEA’s Connect Series amplifiers for the project.

“We knew right away that LEA’s technologies would be a great fit for this project,” commented Mike Charles, Principal at Brownestone. “We were proud to introduce AT Productions to these groundbreaking amplifiers, the complex needed an innovative solution to improve efficiency, and LEA’s technologies did just that.”

The system is built upon a Dante network and is controlled by touchscreen-based software from Symetrix. Sonance speakers are used throughout the facility. The slot rooms and restaurants feature background music, and the bars have audio support for big-screen, televised sports, and other programming. The facility’s two-floor bingo hall features a main downstairs floor with a couple of audio zones and two additional zones upstairs. The previous system was underpowered and built upon different systems and platforms over the years, so there was no continuity; some areas were too loud, some too soft, and there was no global control.

“We put a callback system in place with a monitor above the bingo caller bringing in audio from upstairs so the bingo caller can hear if anybody upstairs calls bingo,” said Taylor. “We placed ceiling microphones upstairs that feed down through the DSP to the bingo callers monitors. For the bingo hall, it’s all very transparent. They can now hear every “bingo” called out.”

Taylor explained that there are three separate fibre-connected IDF (intermediate distribution frame) racks in the facility. There currently is a mix of 10, two- four- and eight-channel, Danteenabled digital amplifiers from LEA Professional powering the system. Specifically, the team specified LEA Dante Connect Series 168D, 354D, and 352D amplifiers.

The Connect Series is a commercial-grade audio amplifier family perfectly suited for small to medium-scale installations. Featuring three ways to connect, users can engage the builtin Wi-Fi access point, connect to the venue’s Wi-Fi, or use the FAST Ethernet to connect to any local area network via Cat5 or Cat6 cable. The Connect Series also features cloud connectivity allowing users to harness the power of the cloud for remote control, monitoring, configuration, and more from any personal device. The Connect Series also features HiZ and LoZ channel selectable analogue inputs, Dante inputs, and external I/O control for remote on/off and fault monitoring.

“When I first learned about LEA amps, I immediately saw that the feature set is incredible. This is definitely an amp line I wanted to carry,” said Taylor. “The form factor is great, the channel count, the power, the flexibility — the remote configurability was a huge selling point for my client since I can remote into the system and monitor and fix things that might need to be adjusted.”

The BJ’s Bingo project was the first time Taylor specified LEA amplifiers. Still, in the meantime, his team has used LEA amps on other projects, and each of those projects has been easily commissioned, with very happy end-users.

Taylor added that he is now specifying LEA amplifiers for every 70V installation project that is coming across his desk: “We have other projects in the works and I’m very excited to use LEA amplifiers.” www.leaprofessional.com

Cracker Zac’s

COMPANY: FBT Audio

LOCATION: Johannesburg, South Africa

Cracker Zac’s, the latest addition to The Fun Company in Rosebank, Johannesburg, offers a unique entertainment experience for over 21s, featuring a boutique tenpin bowling alley, augmented reality darts, and a retro arcade inside an upmarket bar. To complement this unique atmosphere, audio installation company, Get Connected, selected FBT speakers to create a versatile audio system. Jonathan Isaacs, the owner and audio installation expert at Get Connected, was tasked with finding a speaker system that would look neat, be versatile enough to be used as a background music system by day and deliver a powerful audio experience by night. Isaacs chose FBT’s J8A Active Speakers, which met all the requirements of his client.

“We went for lots of small speakers as opposed to two or three massive speakers to keep things looking neat whilst evenly distributing the sound throughout the venue,” said Isaacs. “The FBT J8A Active Speaker has a proper compression driver with a high frequency but is still a really small speaker.” www.fbtaudio.co.uk

Isaacs used custom-made brackets to hang the speakers from the ceiling. He added FBT Subline 115SA Active Subs for enhanced bass, which were hung from the ceiling using custombuilt brackets keeping the floor area free from obstruction.

Isaacs praised the FBT gear for being easy to install and for delivering an exceptional audio experience. He also commended StageOne, the FBT supplier, for its support and backup. “Peter Berry has been very helpful, and Rishaad is amazing with support and backup,” he said.

Flannels

COMPANY: Green Hippo LOCATION: Liverpool, UK

British luxury fashion multi-retailer Flannels’ new flagship store is attracting customers with an ongoing series of projections onto its impressive façade with the help of a Hippotizer Nevis+ Media Server.

The 120,000 sq ft seven-storey megastore, in the heart of Liverpool, opened in the summer with a curated projection show, highlighting the in-house brands and offering a sense of what visitors can expect inside. The success of the beamed video content led to the projections becoming a permanent installation, with an Epson 20K lumen projector positioned on the roof of a building opposite the Flannels store. Beneath the projector is a weather-proofed rack where the Nevis+ is rigged and constantly running. Motion Mapping was approached by the Flannels’ AV team to deliver the project, with Stuart Harris at the helm of the projection solution. He supplied a graphics template for the Flannels team, who then uploaded video, stills, and branding content for Harris to process into a seamless video, using the Nevis+.

To manipulate the visuals to be projected onto the curved façade of the building, Harris used Hippotizer’s SHAPE 3D Mapping tool, meaning he could arrive on-site and set up the projector with confidence in its alignment and focus.

“We had a short window of time to get this project delivered and set up with all of the content and projection right, including all alignment and blending with the framework of the intricate architecture of the building,” said Harris. “Our projector position is off-centre, opposite the Flannels building. SHAPE made it simple to warp and blend the images so that they appeared correctly, while being beamed from the rooftop of another building. We even had to do some of this in real time, and the Nevis+ handled it with ease.”

Being a single-output job, the Nevis+ was the correct solution for the project, offering one DisplayPort 1.2 output with EDID Management, along with its compact size and flexible mounting options.

“The special launch night for Flannels’ flagship UK store meant that we needed a reliable media server that I knew would just deliver the job,” added Harris. “Now that the project is a permanent installation, I’m confident that it can continue to deliver – despite its small size, the Nevis+ is a robust and consistent machine and it does the job perfectly. The software also makes my job far easier.”

Harris and his team have installed a remote camera so that they can view the projector and Nevis+ from anywhere, and operate them remotely, which he does using ZooKeeper Control. He is also using Sync Manager in Hippotizer to manage when the projections start each evening, as sunset changes from summer launch to winter continuations. “This feature is really cool,” Harris continued. “I just enter the location of the Nevis+ and it automatically knows when to kickstart feeding the video data to the projector, when daylight comes to an end. And it also controls the projector on-off to save power and help the projector last longer.” www.green-hippo.com

Flannels is now one of Liverpool’s most exclusive and experiential department stores, fusing retail and leisure under one roof with a blend of top brands, dining options, and in-house experiences.