Mandalay Bay Convention Center
Once known primarily for its glittering casinos and nightlife, the Las Vegas Strip has undergone a transformation that has seen convention centers pop up in order to serve the growing business clientele of Nevada's shining city. Owned by the Mandalay Resort Group, the convention center is one of the five largest convention facilities in the nation.
In order to accomplish the goal of a large and flexible convention center in a highly competitive market, the owners sought to provide as much in-house technical production support as possible. The idea was to reduce a potential client's costs, because outside system rental costs would be commensurately reduced. Thus, the design criteria requirements incorporated a distribution infrastructure capable of supporting everything from a meeting room's podium mic to corporate blowouts, including broadcast video; fully cross-patchable audio, video, and room control; production intercom; CATV and MATV; DMX for production lighting control; video RGB distribution over twisted pair; and multiple 100Base-T drops. In addition, the system needed to be visually and operationally unobtrusive, and configurable from a number of positions via TCP-IP over an in-house Ethernet LAN.
With a successful track record in similiar projects, SAVI was retained to develop a performance spec and plans for the new facility. The construction schedule was intimidating: one year for design development and one year to complete construction and open the facility. Given the size, scope, and projected timeline for the project, SAVI knew that virtually any company's resources would be stretched thin. Drawing on an existing working relationships, SAVI consulted with TechSpa as to the approach of the network and DSP programming to ensure the fabrication would be smooth and the facility would open on schedule.
The center spans four levels, with 138 room areas covering nearly 2 million square feet spread over almost 60 acres. Function spaces include six separate exhibit halls totaling nearly 1 million square feet of space, as well as four ballrooms. Of these, the smallest occupies 31,800 square feet, and the largest is the largest hotel ballroom in the nation at more than 100,000 square feet. The biggest design considerations revolved around creating an infrastructure capable of providing sufficient flexibility while maintaining the appropriate signal quality.
Including DSP processing, remote amplifier monitoring, ceiling speaker systems, and remotely addressable control systems and crosspatch matrices, the total infrastructure design was evaluated from a cost/performance/flexibility perspective. The use of a fiber-optic signal and control distribution system enabled the amplifier racks to be distributed to equipment closets on each floor while being monitored and controlled from a central location. Although it was a fairly typical application of remote amplifier monitoring and control, it saved nearly $250,000 on the cost of speaker cable alone.
The distribution of audio within the overall facility during a function was another significant concern. Again, scale was the key factor. With main ballroom dimensioned at 1½ football fields in length and nearly 1 football field wide — dealing with traditional analog audio snakes was not a viable solution from technical, sonic, or budgetary perspectives. A solution involving portable production racks was developed. Once again, because of the size of the project, the traditional rationale for the use of fiber optics versus copper (zero signal loss, limitless routing potential, perfect isolation, and so on) was bolstered by significant cost savings.
The CCCP room became the home for a large Peavey MediaMatrix system. Four (4) MediaMatrix 980 mainframes were installed, each with the maximum allocation of 8 CN-DSP cards, for a total of 128 DSP chips. The system was configured for 330 inputs and 340 outputs, with each of 138 zones programmed with at least two inputs (mic and line) and two outputs (room audio feed and line output feeds). Functionally, the system uses more than 500 parametric equalizers and more than 150 mixers with 1,000 VU meters. Including display monitors, keyboards, UPS systems, audio monitors, and mainframes, all processing gear was mounted in four racks. As calculated by SAVI, this amount of signal processing, using traditional outboard equipment, would have occupied approximately 22 equipment racks.
Network engineering, including Peak Audio CobraNet and MediaMatrix programming, was provided for SAVI by Paul Daoust. With fully populated mainframes and a considerable amount of traffic between DSP modules, the challenge became how to manage communications within the frames. Using techniques from the Advanced Concepts in MediaMatrix course, Daoust worked with Peavey's course instructor, Joe Kurta of TechSpa, to optimize network and internal bus communications.
The result allows a single operator to quickly and easily monitor all system inputs and outputs and configure any parameter of the system. The development of the software took nearly a year, with the last two months spent in conjunction with the system operators making operationally specific modifications. Extensive use of CAD-developed floor plans presented graphic views of the function rooms, enabling quick visual references.
The CCCP room also provides control of 100 Crest CKV-series 70V power amplifiers via a Crest NexSys system, piggybacked with the audio signal via CobraNet over switched fiber-optic networks. Providing in excess of 96,000W, the amplifiers were located in four amp closets and connected to the distributed speakers via 8-gauge cable. Each of the CKV-series amps are fitted with three interface bays, which in this case are filled with NC-IPN input modules, NC-NXS NexSys interface modules, and NCSLM load monitoring modules. The modules provide remote precision attenuation control, solo, muting, input and output VU metering, and load monitoring capabilities. With a facility of this size, these remote functions saved literally miles of walking during system commissioning and greatly increases the effectiveness of the facility staff during routine operations.