AVC Group, a Slovenian integrator, has deployed a network of Harman BSS Audio Soundweb London devices throughout 352 of Slovenia’s courtrooms. The units are being used for the “Audio Recording in Courts†project, part of the country’s E-justice projects and co-financed by the European Social Fund.
More than 400 Soundweb London BLU-100 processors and 220 BLU-BOB2 output expander devices have been deployed for management of the independent audio systems.
AVC needed to meet the main objective of supplying up to eight channels of digital audio recording for court hearings across all courtrooms, with full redundancy. These recordings needed to be shared between all interested parties (judges, lawyers, transcription services), with security and usage tracking possibilities, as well as archiving.
Each system in the courtroom is stand-alone. Only the multi-channel recordings are shared over the government-wide broadband network.
“From a maintenance perspective there was only one product to consider and that was Soundweb,” said Jani Medic, project manager for AVC. “Besides all these audio processing functions, we were also looking for simple/predefined and limited individual control for the end user, with fully-centralized control and supervision of all devices over the network by AVC technical staff. We found BSS Audio’s BLU-100 met all the criteria.”
“Not only we can handle combinations of gooseneck mics (between four and eight) with proper processing such as Level Adjustment, Compression and EQ for direct output for multi-channel recording, we can also mix and process the same signals for PA purposes in the same device,” added Medic. “In some instances BLU-BOB2 devices have been added to increase the audio distribution capacity.”
Additional Harman equipment deployed throughout the courtrooms include more than 2,300 AKG gooseneck microphones, 1,500 AKG headphones, 258 dbx AFS 224 Advanced Feedback Suppression processors, 258 Crown XLS amplifiers, and 590 JBL CBT 50LA loudspeakers.
Summing up the installation, Medic stated, “Having the knowledge of HiQnet London Architect programming, and knowing how easily and quickly the parameters can be customized, made the installation itself relatively easy. As a result, we knew we would be able to give rapid support to the customer in the unlikely event of malfunction.”