Telco Rings In Changes With Allen & Heath

With the ability to deliver high-end presentations, press conferences and live streams integral to their future plans, Belgian telecoms giant Proximus identified the need to upgrade their auditorium’s ageing in-house mixing system to fulfil their ambitions.

Brussels based pro-audio distributor XLR were tasked with specifying a powerful and reliable system capable of handling multiple types of audio sources – both on-site and from OB trucks – with ease. Bearing these criteria in mind, the team at XLR designed a system built around Avantis, a 64-channel 42-bus mixer with a 96kHZ FPGA core and a comprehensive range of I/O options.

With a pair of 128-channel digital I/O ports available on the mixer, a Dante I/O card was chosen for the first port to enable integration into the building’s Dante network. This also allowed XLR and Proximus to tap into Allen & Heath’s Everything I/O ecosystem of remote audio expanders, which includes Dante options.

Two DT168 Dante audio expanders, connected via pair of Cisco Catalyst switches, were installed in the main rack for interfacing with wireless microphones, lectern mics, and analogue audio sources. Additionally, a DT164-W Dante audio expander was installed in an onstage floor pocket to accommodate floor inputs/outputs, plus another DT164-W at the rear of the room for press I/O. All video sources have their audio streams fed into the system via Dante, utilising the Analog Way Aquilon display management system.

For the second I/O port, a 128-channel SuperMADI card was chosen to facilitate connection to OB trucks, with both BNC and SFP connectivity on offer for maximum flexibility.

Despite not having used Avantis before, Proximus’ team of AV specialists were able to quickly set up a comprehensive routing scheme, utilising the 42 configurable mix busses on offer to meet their complex routing requirements. In fact, things went so smoothly that the entire system was programmed and ready for showtime in less than 3 days from unpacking.

“The Allen & Heath Avantis and its paired expanders are the ideal choice for our upgrade of the mixing facilities and auditoriums. It produces great audio quality, has an easy-to-use interface with easy recall of all parameters, great expansion capabilities, custom console layouts, and provides all this in a fast workflow” says Marc Bauwens, Senior Engineer and Audio-visual Project Manager at Proximus. “Allen & Heath and XLR, our local distributor, provided us with great assistance throughout the whole build and integration process.”