Text:/ Christopher Holder

AND THE WINNER IS

The big winners out of ICC Sydney are d&b Audiotechnik, with large quantities of V and T Series loudspeakers systems in the theatres; Crestron, with all the HDBaseT video switching via DM frames; Pansonic projection; ACA Cotag Media that runs the ‘smart building’ aspects of ICC Sydney; Shure, with its new MX wireless; Digico consoles; and Jands, which took care of all the staging, lighting, rigging, drapery, and lighting control. But arguably the real star of ICC Sydney AV show is QSC.

QSC got its foot firmly in the door thanks to Q-SYS. A huge site using a converged network? There was no argument from anyone — Q-SYS was a unanimous choice. From there it wasn’t difficult to countenance the use of QSC’s highly regarded networked multi-channel amps and its ‘Acoustic Design’ series in-ceiling speakers. It’s a monumental account for QSC. And it all started with acknowledgement that AV would share the data network.

“Knowing it would be a converged network didn’t concern me,” recalled Mark Shaw. “This is a large project but it’s not a complex network. The topology of the ICC Sydney buildings is massive. There’s a 10Gbit fibre backbone, there’s redundant fibre running to every single switch in the whole venue. If we were to run a separate AV network you’d have twice the maintenance, twice the cabling, twice the hardware and staff. A converged network was the only practical approach.”

As mentioned, the fibre links the machine rooms, with Cat7 feeding meeting rooms and other floor boxes which are designed in clusters across floors of the building. Having this ‘wheel and spoke’ approach certainly made commissioning easier than working with a super control room sending fibre out to every meeting room — chunks of the building could be completed without impacting on the rest of the venue. There was also an operational advantage to grouping the meeting rooms, according to Head of AV Services Brian Nash: “There’s a feeling of intimacy rather than being a massive building. Smaller events are crucial to us, and ICC Sydney is grouped such that you can have your plenary session in an appropriately sized theatre [the largest accommodates 8000+ delegates, down to the 1000-cap Pyrmont Theatre] with the requisite complement of meeting rooms for that session. We cater for different sizes and it works.”

The Lendlease Technology Division had a man on staff for the duration (ICT Project Director, Darren Page) to help ensure everyone played nicely on the network.

“That’s how important it was,” observed Mark Shaw. “As far as services go in the building, AV is by far the largest network dependency, which is why Darren and I basically shared a desk for 12 months!”

The network is futureproofed as much as it can be: “You do what you can with the technology you have. We have a super-fast 10Gb network backbone using Cisco hardware installed by Telstra. The unknown is how much of the network will be occupied by wi-fi in the future.”

Brian Nash nods in furious agreement: “”We’re aware of the incredible demand for wi-fi and we believe our robust backbone means we are more than ready for it.”

ANYTHING TO ANYWHERE

Fredon Technology was the AV integrator, led by Director Nick Orsatti. Being on the front line, installing and commissioning the AV, more than anyone it was Nick and his team who became intimately acquainted with the advantages of Q-SYS.

Nick Orsatti: “Early on, the advantages of adopting Q-SYS was all about a robustness for the operator — getting a mic to an amp to a speaker, that couldn’t be inadvertently re-routed or otherwise intercepted. Q-SYS was the only choice really. 

We use Shure MX wireless in the meeting rooms. MX has Dante capability, Q-SYS has Dante capability, all that’s there, but we have analogue outputs from the MX receivers feeding into Q-SYS inputs that feed into QLAN. That way someone can’t come in with a Dante controller and decide to re-route audio or record it. So the Dante layer is there for the operators’ use, but we’re not reliant on Dante for paging to the foyers etc.

Mark Shaw: The horsepower of a single Q-SYS core — its single I/O count and processing speed — is unbeatable in a venue this large. I’ve not dealt with a venue with the sheer quantity of ICC Sydney’s I/O, and we’ve explored the limits of the Q-SYS Core’s capacity, and it’s working well.

Nick Orsatti: That processing grunt has meant Q-SYS can take care of the the meeting room conferencing as well. The original brief from the State mandated the need for VC in every meeting room, which means we need echo cancellation in every meeting room. We’re unsure at this stage just how much conferencing is going to be done in the rooms, but regardless, Q-SYS can take care of the processing natively in software. I don’t need hardware dedicated inputs in the room.

Mark Shaw: Redundancy was another big factor in the decision. Each of the Q-SYS 1100 cores has 256 ins and outs, and we have six cores, each with a redundant backup — 12 in total running the venue.

Nick Orsatti: The simplicity of the redundancy capability was second to none. The way it’s configured, if a core fails it switches over automatically. Nothing else does it with that simplicity.

Coupled with the QSC networked amps, we have full load monitoring. If a speaker line is compromised, we have that monitoring capability right through the venue on every zone.

Q-SYS also deals with general paging (a zoned paging solution for the reception desks to the rooms etc) and distributed audio everywhere. 

Thanks to Q-SYS, it helped QSC secure the loudspeaker business as well.

Mark Shaw: The QSC AD series of in-ceiling speakers have performed well. Initially, the available product data gave me confidence.

We’ve modelled every PA zone, meeting room. Every space has been EASE modelled using the data from QSC and d&b, and we’ve found through our on-site measurements that the data has been extremely accurate. Which is not always the case with other manufacturers’ data. In fact, the QSC data right down the line has been very accurate: from the loudspeakers matched to the networked amp, speaking over the Q-SYS network… through to the brilliant Q-SYS whitepapers that we could provide to Telstra and Lendlease Technology, which helped them roll out the packets across the network. It’s been a very solid end-to-end solution.

ELECTROACOUSTIC PRIORITIES

You’d expect a consultant with ASL’s credentials to take its acoustic modelling and measurements seriously. But what was unexpected and heartening for a large project such as  ICC Sydney was that the initial State brief took electroacoustics — the amplified sound of the venue — very seriously indeed. And as touched on by Mark Shaw, not just the showpiece plenary theatre but every space. 

Mark Shaw: Every hireable space was electroacoustically modelled. ASL’s Aleksandra Deren performed an enormous amount of EASE modelling. We factored in the room finishes, specified the speaker model, the locations, specified the angles, and the acoustic treatment, all to be approved by the independent verifiers of the State then installed and tested.

The level of detail in the specifications meant if the integrator proposed the use of an equivalent product they would have to remodel everything from scratch. The selection process was detailed and exhaustive. Every product was selected with a number of factors in mind — performance, aesthetics, EASE date, budget, and single vendor risk mitigation — and it was all decided on early in the piece.

HIGH STAKES

Demolishing SCEC and starting again was a brave move. The brand new ICC Sydney had to be demonstrably superior to SCEC and indeed to any of the alternatives in Australia. MCEC won’t be panicking; it’s booked out for years to come. But being booked out isn’t necessarily the main game, it’s attracting the super-primo events. It’s the Bill Clinton keynote, the world congress of anaesthetists, the international launch of the next Tesla luxury coupe… The cachet of staging Australia’s highest profile events and concerts is significant. 

AV has never been more crucial to the success of event production. Being seen and heard is obviously the baseline requirement, but now it’s just as important to ensure that the event buzz ripples through cyberspace.

ICC Sydney showcases the AV state of the art. It’s a posterboy for making good on the ‘convergence promise’. Fascinatingly, convergence didn’t require a blindfolded step off the cliff in faith, nor did it see a bunch of traditional AV roles being fulfilled by IT professionals with no deep knowledge of AV. Success is reliant on product vendors who understand ICT constraints and ensure their product suite works within that framework, and system specifiers and integrators that share the same deep knowledge of both AV and IT, and have the knowledge and experience to design and implement them to meet the client’s requirements.

A truly landmark project provides an AV milestone — a yardstick for the industry. In 2017, ICC Sydney is that AV monument.