Barcelona’s T1 has MediaMatrix heart

30 November 2010

A new Terminal One building has opened at Barcelona airport. Aena, the Spanish state-owned company that manages Spain’s airports, hired Lexon to design, supply and install the public address and digital audio control system.

The terminal covers 544,066m² and houses 168 check-in counters, 15 baggage carousels and a retail area. Aena employed Lexon SA, a Spanish professional audio, lighting distribution and systems engineering company, to design, supply and install the public address and digital audio control system throughout the building.

T1’s solution is based on a MediaMatrix system and 314 Crest CKi power amplifiers, each equipped with a CobraNet module that enables interconnectivity between each amplifier and the MediaMatrix MM-980 Mainframe.

The MediaMatrix system installed into T1 Barcelona comprises:

· 8 x Mainframe MM980nt with dual, removable, mirrored redundant hard drives;

· 39 x CAB-8i 8-in, digitally controlled mic/line preamp, analogue-to-Digital CobraNet audio bridge (CAB)

· 8 x CAB-8o 8-out, digital-to-analog CobraNet audio bridge(CAB)

· 26 x MM-DSP-CNII Digital Processing Units for processing audio ported to or from a CobraNet network (via the CAB Cobranet audio bridges).

Besides the audio distribution system, Lexon’s engineering department also handled the acoustic design of the building. For this they used the acoustic modelling software tool, EASE, to determine the number, model and positioning of the loudspeakers. Based on their findings, Lexon provided the engineering firm Sampol with the necessary speaker enclosures and microphones along with the 314 Crest Audio Cki amplifiers (equipped with NX CobraNet modules) to complete the installation.