Camco and its Australian distributor Group Technologies have been chosen as the power amplifier supplier for the primary AV systems in a new Melbourne convention centre.
The Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC) is claimed to be the first ‘6 Star Green Star’ environmentally-rated convention centre.
One of the primary objectives for the complex is to showcase pioneering technology which enhances a convention centre encompassing 32 meeting rooms of various sizes, a Grand Banquet Room and Plenary Hall that can be sub-divided into three self-contained theatres.
The audiovisual installation uses different models of power amplifier from the German manufacturer CAMCO to provide flexible operational functionality. PA systems have been built into every meeting room of the convention centre which, together with self-prompting ‘smart lecterns’, offer event organisers and guest speakers self-management capabilities, all monitored in-house via centralised or satellite control rooms.
For the main facilities of the Melbourne Convention Centre, the design premise was to install a high category of industry-standard pro-audio equipment to encourage visiting clients to utilise the in-house systems. The flexibility of the room configurations set the biggest challenge. It was essential that the Plenary Hall could be operated as a single 5,553 capacity theatre, as well as being sub-divisible into three entirely independent, acoustically-separate theatres, one with capacity for 2,569 delegates and two for up to 1,507 delegates each.
Camco Vortex, Tecton and Q-Power amplifiers have been specified to power the concert sound system in the Plenary, where the main front-of-house concert system is a substantial line array design, with directional sub-bass, and a large number of fill speakers to address the balcony and under-balcony areas. Designed with eight separate arrays, the system can be adapted for different modes of operation by a simple pre-set recall within the audio processors. A flexible mixing console system can be patched from simple show mixing set-ups to full production set-ups, with separate front of house, recording and stage monitor consoles, running on a redundant optical network.
Chosen for their transparent sonic performance, extreme power and ultra reliability, a total of 22 Camco Vortex 6 units are used to drive the eight front-of-house arrays, with 9x Tecton 38.4 amps for the fill speakers and Q-Power 10 4-channel high-output amps for the monitor speakers on stage.
There are 32 meeting rooms, classified by capacity into four types. The largest is the Grand Banquet Room, another divisible space (capacity: 1,500 delegates), which has been equipped with a sizeable line-array sound system, enabling several modes of presentation. Six small cantilevered meeting rooms are aimed at board meeting style events, the rest of the facilities are designated as small, medium and large rooms, with the larger spaces sub-dividing to form smaller ones.
The audio systems for all these meeting rooms are nearly identical, although with a varying quantity of inputs and outputs, and feature Tecton 38.4 amplifiers throughout.
Camco’s export sales director Mick Anderson said: "All Camco products conform to CE / C-Tick / EC Declarations of Conformity and Directives for standards of Security, Emission, Immunity, RoHS. With a manufacturing and product design principle set firmly within the realms of using technology to maximise process and result, Camco has always taken a very active stance with regards to all related "green" issues. Considerable time and effort is given to the design and production of our finished goods, while at the same time we pay close attention to how component parts are made and source. We care about our manufacturing procedures and we care about our world, and we try to maintain a balance between the two.”