HAL Applications

Hotel Meeting Room Combinations with Background Music and Paging using a HAL1x and EXP5x

This system provides background music and paging for eight zones with these requirements:

The lobby and hallway zones need manager volume control from the office.
A receptionist needs to be able to page into any of the four meeting rooms, the lobby, hallways, restrooms, and office using these four scenarios: Page All, Lobby, Room A, B, C or D.
The Lobby has a performing area with inputs for guest musicians to plug into the overhead system to replace the background music.
Room A has inputs on the wall for guest musicians or a live mixer to plug into for special events or when all rooms are combined.
Room A has a large table with ten microphones for recording or conferencing. A podium contains a blu-ray player and room for a laptop.
Moveable walls can create up to four rooms, or any combination of 1, 2 or 3 rooms.
Each room contains a remote control near each door to adjust source and volume.
Background music is available in all areas from a single source.

This can be accomplished with:

(1) HAL1x Multiprocessor
(1) EXP5x Input Expander
(1) PAGER1 Paging Station
(2) RAD3 Dual XLR Input
(5) DR3 Remotes
(1) DR2 Remote
(8) Amplifier channels, using Rane MA4 Amplifiers and MT4 Transformers driving multiple ceiling arrays.

Hotel floor plan for meeting room combinations

In a meeting room with ten microphones, one audio source (e.g., blu-ray) and a laptop on the podium, all these channels can connect directly to one EXP5x. A single DR3 in the room can select the audio source (blu-ray or laptop) and adjust the room volume. Or, the DR3 can be programmed as a mixer allowing independent level adjustment of all 12 sources in the room: 10 mics, blu-ray and laptop. If the podium location moves from the north to the east wall, duplicate remotes can provide multiple control locations. Use a preset recalled from a switch closure, DR2 remote or 3rd-party Ethernet control system to “spin” the room or disable any DR remote in a room.

The EXP5x is perfectly suited to expand a HAL1x’s analog audio inputs, and control is expanded with four more DR ports. Each of the 12 inputs can independently accept mic, line, or Line-Plus audio — the ultimate in flexible input topologies. Also worth noting is the performance enhancement achieved since the mic input topologies automatically compensate for the sensitivity difference between condenser and dynamic mics.

There are equipment placement options. If the HAL1x lives in the equipment room, the EXP5x can live in the podium along with the blu-ray, and a single CAT 5 returns to the HAL1x. This greatly reduces cabling, as it gets all the Room A mics on one CAT 5 cable. However, if you are upgrading an existing facility, the EXP5x connects at the end of the existing analog conduit feeds in one or more equipment rooms.

If you had 12 such meeting rooms, use 12 daisy-chained EXP5x Expanders and a single HAL1x. There are plenty of spare DR ports available for adding control locations, so the same 10-seat mic tables could be duplicated in all of the rooms. The RAD ports on the HAL1x support the addition of 8-channel AM2 Automixers, which could be portable. AM mixers can be added to larger rooms - even during a meeting - to add 8 more gain-shared mixed mics to the 10 in any given room. Review the cascading feature of the Gain-sharing Auto Mixer or the Room Combine Processing blocks within Halogen for details.

HAL1x and EXP5x rear panel connections for meeting room combining

There is no downloadable configuration file for this example.

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