Text: Derek Powell

FIGHT FOR SPACE

Both men were unanimous when I asked them to nominate the greatest challenge for super yacht integrators. “Space!” declared Sam. He explained that for famous interior designers, AV equipment was well down the priority list. “We really do get whatever space is left and we fight tooth and nail to get what we can.” Sam admitted to learning a few tricks over the years for creative positioning of racks. “…And with that comes heat,” he continued, noting that air handlers and over-temperature alarms were a must to allow equipment to operate in cramped quarters. From the boat builder’s perspective, Eamon backed him up. “Space is number one,” he said, adding that because an audiovisual installation was in virtually every compartment, it was crucial for the boat builders to get accurate equipment housing and cabling requirements from the audiovisual designers early in the planning process.

“The next biggest challenge is figuring out what the customer actually wants,” Eamon said, noting that sometimes owners weren’t sure what they wanted. “But this particular client was well aware of what he wanted the system to do,” he continued. “The quality of the audio was probably more important to him than the quality of the video, so we had to work quite hard to deliver an audio experience in keeping with the rest of the boat.”

With this in mind, Sam and the Liquid Automation team made sure they lavished special care on every detail of sound quality. The owner’s stateroom features a large screen TV that rises from the floor and swivels so it can be viewed either from the bed or from the couch. To keep the correct stereo image, the DSP system changes to match the rotation of the screen so as the screen pivots, the channels flip between speakers, maintaining the left and right perspective relative to the picture.

ROCK THE BOAT

Meanwhile, the cockpit and after-deck needed to become party central when Vertigo makes port in Ibiza, so its audio system was carefully engineered to take on a variety of roles. Even before the boat was built, EASE plots were done from the 3D drawings of the space. The Liquid Automation team took special care to load the model with the acoustic properties of all the proposed fittings and furnishings, right down to the curtains, to determine optimum speaker locations. To supplement coverage on the open rear deck, JBL powered speakers are stowed in watertight compartments ready to be deployed onto spigots built into the deck.

“At commissioning, we did time alignments and tweaked the frequency response of the room,” Sam said. “Then we added a dynamic EQ so that when the system’s at a low volume, it’s a nice warm, even sound. But as they really crank it up, at a certain SPL it will change to more of a nightclub sound… On the water, it just sounds fantastic.”

However, don’t imagine for a moment that video has been forgotten. This is where the Crestron Digital Media system comes into its own. The fibre backbone, chosen for its immunity to noise and interference, serves not just the 25 entertainment monitors and the Projectiondesign F12 video projector but also distributes the navigation systems to the bridge, which was a whole new challenge.

On the bridge, sources ranging from GPS to depth sounders, radar, and even a night vision camera mounted high on the mast need to be routed to six widescreen displays running at 1920×1200. The sources, mostly DVI but at varying resolutions, were scaled and then fed into a 16×16 matrix before being linked by fibre to the bridge.

But that’s not all. Using the USB breakaway feature of the Crestron DM system, the controls for each system accompanied the video. So if a GPS display, say, was routed to Monitor One, then a trackball on the dashboard could be associated with that monitor and assigned via the Crestron USB breakaway function to provide control of menu features to operate the GPS base station. Then if the input was changed to display radar, the USB routing would change to give the trackball control of the new system.

The Crestron also allowed RS232 control of each monitor so that at night, all six could be uniformly dimmed to allow the crew to retain their night vision through the windscreen while still monitoring the instruments.

With such vital systems, nothing was left to chance and Eamon described how the Alloy Yachts team built a full mock-up of the bridge from plywood so that Liquid Automation could test the distribution and control system thoroughly, months before the boat was ready to be fitted out.

HYBRID CONTROL

All through the three-year project, testing and mock-up systems were a vital component in achieving a reliable outcome. Unusually, the control system is a hybrid with AMX touchscreens managing the Crestron back-end. The owner had seen AMX touchpanels in other yachts and made this part of his specification but at the time, there was no AMX switching and fibre transmission comparable to Digital Media. During several months of testing, Liquid Automation tried a number of approaches to system programming before settling on their current programming solution. “Since the launch we haven’t had one issue with AMX controlling Crestron. It’s been extremely reliable so we’re very happy with that – and the owner loves it,” Sam said.

RELIABILITY IS EVERYTHING

Although there are countless ways this project embodies excellence, Eamon spelt out his number one priority for electronics: “Reliability is the only thing that we care about really. We’re aware that we have to do tricky things but if we make a system that’s capable of a lot and it only works 95 per cent of the time, then we’ve failed utterly. Every time a guest goes to use it, it must do exactly what they expect it to do.”

By that criterion (as well as many others) Liquid Automation can stand tall as there has yet to be any downtime attributed to the audiovisual and control system. Keeping things that way despite the constant pitching and rolling of the boat requires constant checking which, thanks to the novel Ihiji IP monitoring system, the team can achieve even half a world away. The Ihiji status screen at Liquid’s Auckland office constantly monitors every device on the Vertigo network and can drill down to check the status of connected devices on Cresnet or RS-232, flagging any device that reports a problem.

“One day when we arrived at the office, we noticed that a whole bunch of audio devices had dropped offline,” Sam recalled. Realising that all the affected devices were connected to the same power board, they quickly emailed the boat’s engineer. Half a world away it was late at night, so in the morning the engineer read his mail, checked the power board and re-attached an IEC lead that had fallen out. “He was able to get it all back up and running before the owner, who was on board with his family, woke up and went to use the system.”

Judging from its awards so far, Liquid Automation has the right recipe for reliability, innovation and excellence. Together with Alloy Yachts International, it seems certain the team will continue to make waves on a world stage.

PROJECT PERSONNEL

Sam Ashton – System design and project management
Darian Sundar – Audio design
Steve O’Brien – Programming
Mike Snooks – Site manager/technician
Mike Willis – System drawings/logistics
Adam Dudding – Installation technician
Lucas Rusden – Installation technician

MORE INFORMATION

Liquid Automation: www.liquidautomation.co.nz
Alloy Yachts Vertigo: www.alloyyachts.co.nz/yachts/sailing+yachts/Vertigo.html