The Hamilton City Hall in Ontario, Canada has replaced its old conference system with a Televic solution as part of wider renovations. Furthermore the building’s old IR assisted listening system for spectators was replaced by a Sennheiser system.
“Fred Eisenberger, and the fifteen City Council members were frustrated by the lack of functionality with their old system,” said Shawn Quinlan, president of Nationwide Audio Visual, the company that won the successful bid to replace the system. “The functionality was outdated, leading to service calls a few times a month concerning crackling and intermittent audio, and a ring of omni mics that bled like crazy.”
Powered by the Televic TCS 5500-S management software on a CPU 5500 central processor, Hamilton City Hall’s new conference system is comprised of seventeen V5B 5500 delegate voting panels with chip card readers and two DLCD 550 chairman and deputy chairman interfaces with chip card readers. The mayor and council members each carry a chip card that they use to swipe into the system, which makes it very easy to keep track of who’s who with no effort on the part of the users. The system recognizes each user and grants him or her appropriate voting and overrides privileges. The legislators cast votes through the Televic system, which automatically tallies the votes and displays them on a screen, making it clear who voted up, who voted down, and who abstained.
Hamilton City Hall’s new Televic conference system delivers superior fidelity, allowing council members, the mayor, spectators, and invited speakers to focus on the substance of the conversation. Each council member and mayor’s seat has its own dedicated TGM 406 gooseneck directional microphone and LS 5500 local loudspeaker. Unlike other conference systems, the Televic system permits each component at a delegate’s seat to be separated on its own panel. “It never mattered much in the past,” said Quinlan. “But now most of the council members bring laptops to their seats. With Televic, we were able to arrange the voting controls, the microphone, and the loudspeaker so that a laptop wouldn’t interfere.” In addition, Sennheiser wireless handheld and lapel microphones are available for presenters, freeing them to move away from the podium for a more effective delivery of their message. Televic is distributed in Canada by Sennheiser.
In addition to overhauling the conference system, Nationwide Audio Visual replaced the room’s old assisted listening system. “We could have succeeded with just two of the Sennheiser SZI 1015 IR emitters, but given what they had experienced with the lack of coverage from the previous system, we flooded the oddly-shaped room with four units,” said Quinlan. A Sennheiser SI 1015 provides system modulation, and twelve Sennheiser RI 150S receivers with PX 100 headphones deliver amplified audio to those audience members who request it.