Las Vegas installer likes ‘green’ solution

Communication Electronic Systems’ executive says Cooper Notification’s new speakers with LED strobe and hi-fi sound good for ECS and more by:  Tess Nacelewicz  -  Monday, May 6, 2013 LAS VEGAS—A new Cooper Notification solution that combines an LED strobe with high-fidelity sound in speakers that save energy and are so intelligible they can be used not only for emergency messaging, but for general paging and background music, is a boon to dealers, according to Josh Claunch of Communication Electronic Systems.

“We’re excited to use it,” Claunch told Security Systems News at the ISC West show, held here in April. “It kind of gives us an edge.”

He was talking about the newest Wheelock’s Exceder LED Series solution, which Cooper, a Long Branch, N.J.-based supplier of life safety and mass notification solutions, was touting at the show.

Last year at ISC West, Cooper introduced its energy-efficient light-emitting diode notification appliances.

Ted Milburn, Cooper’s VP of marketing, told Security Systems News that since then, the company has been “taking LED across our entire platform,” phasing out its “typical xenon technology … in favor of LED.”

And at this year’s show, Milburn said, “we’ve taken two steps. We’ve packaged the LED strobe onto our speaker and then we’ve upgraded the speaker to a high-fidelity speaker for purposes of intelligibility. … In the space for both fire and mass notification, there’s a lot more use for general-purpose paging as well as background music, and it’s just a better-quality speaker that you can use for multiple services.”

Claunch said the product will give his Las Vegas-based company—a family-owned enterprise with about 100 employees that has been in business since the 1970s—an advantage. He said that “there's a big incentive here in town” to construct "green" buildings. With the new Cooper solution requiring less wiring and power, Claunch said, “we now have the opportunity to say, ‘Look, this is something we can provide.’”

Communication Electronic Systems specializes in fire alarms, Claunch said, but its other services include audio. Now, he said, with the high-frequency range of the new Cooper solution “we can actually use this for paging as well, instead of having to do two systems. So we can show some value there as well to end users.”

In a news release at the show, Cooper announced “the industry’s first line of speakers to utilize light-emitting diode as the light source for its speaker strobe models. The newest solution from Wheelock’s Exceder LED Series produces high-fidelity sound output in a low-profile design for indoor wall-mount applications, where intelligible voice is required.”

The company said that with “the widest frequency response range in the industry, 300 to 8,000 Hz, the Exceder LED speakers and speaker strobes feature leading intelligibility with crisp, clear voice messages and tone signaling ideal for emergency communications, mass notification and voice evacuation.”

It said that the company’s “patented LED technology also provides the industry’s lowest current draw. It allows for energy savings of up to 52 percent compared to competitive models. Using LED as the strobe light source, the product incorporates high-efficiency optics to minimize current draw. This allows for a greater number of appliances on the notification appliance circuit and requires fewer power supplies.”

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – FEBRUARY 2010: After spending more than a decade with the drib-drab sounds of passionless loudspeakers clamped to the rafters, the students and faculty at Eldorado High School in Las Vegas were happy to hear that the school district had approved an audio retrofit for their gymnasium – the site not only of sporting events, but also of speeches and pep rallies. The new system, which centers on Danley SH-100 full-range loudspeakers and a muscular TH-115 subwoofer, catapults the school from the technological dark ages to the bold new future of intelligibility, fidelity, and thump that few schools have yet to enter. And at a better value than few would imagine.

Robert Sims, systems engineer at Las Vegas-based Communication Electronic Systems (CES), designed and installed the new eight-ohm system as an adjunct to the company’s longstanding expertise in low-voltage systems – from phones to fire alarms to distributed audio. He used six Danley SH-100 full-range loudspeakers, with 100-degree beam widths, to cover the court and the bleachers, using proximity and the Haas Effect to simultaneously deliver clarity and imaging. With the Danley TH-115 subwoofer time-aligned to the image-source speakers, the system communicates low-end with authority.

Two of the SH-100s reside above center-court, providing both the primary coverage for the court itself and the image-source for the entire system. With bleachers on both sides of the court, Sims added two SH-100s per side in front of the bleachers. The forward clusters are delayed a few milliseconds behind the center cluster so that the listeners perceive the image at center-court, but with volume and clarity conveyed by the nearer speakers. The Danley TH-115 subwoofer, also located center-court, is time-aligned to the center cluster. The low-end responses on all the SH-100s are rolled off slightly so that all the bass in the room originates just with the TH-115, just at one location. That provides tremendous clarity for speech, while still delivering a musical response that is anything but anemic.

“I had heard a lot about Danley loudspeakers, but this was my first project that involved them,” said Sims. “I read all the published specs, and thought, as I do with all specs, that they had some loose affiliation with reality. But I really needed to hear things for myself. It turns out that the Danley numbers hold up! I was especially amazed to hear the drop-off outside the prescribed beam-width. That tight pattern control keeps a lot of energy off the walls so that the system sounds more like an auditorium than a gymnasium. The low end power of the TH-115 sub really adds a new dimension to pep rallies, where the kids like to crank hip-hop and other bass-heavy music.”

Surprisingly, the high-fidelity Danley system had a lower price tag than similar designs involving other manufacturers allowing funds for higher quality components and added wireless gear at the head-end, according to Sims. Because they are highly efficient, Sims was able to bring the overall number of units down without sacrificing coverage or SPL. Perhaps more importantly, Danley loudspeakers require only one amp channel per speaker (no bi- or tri-amplification), so that he was able to keep the number of QSC amps to a minimum, with a modest Biamp Nexia process to kick it all off. A Rane mixer provides a simple user interface.

With the new school year in full swing, Eldorado faculty are capitalizing on the upgrade to reinvigorate school spirit, and the students are capitalizing on the 1/8-inch iPod jack and bumping bass CES provided to make that school spirit their own!

ABOUT DANLEY SOUND LABS Danley Sound Labs is the exclusive home of Tom Danley, one of the most innovative loudspeaker designers in the industry today and recognized worldwide as a pioneer for “outside the box” thinking in professional audio technology. www.danleysoundlabs.com

UNLV's Student Union Gets Community I/O and SOLUTIONS™ Series

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - When the student body at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas first voted to add a fee to help fund construction of the original Moyer Student Union building back in the early 1960’s, UNLV had just 5,000 students, and Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack were still performing regularly down on the Strip.  Forty years later, the city of Las Vegas has grown beyond anyone’s expectations, and the UNLV student population has more than outgrown the Student Union. In fact, if the current 28,000-member student body were to cram into the old building, each person would claim only three square feet. Clearly, it was time for an upgrade. The new Moyer Student Union is being built in two stages, the first of which opened this fall. The new 135,000 square foot space is bigger and better, offering a dining court, a TV lounge, office space for student advocacy and interest groups, more and expanded spaces for studying and socializing, a 300-seat movie theater, and a powerful sound system utilizing several models of Community loudspeakers.

The main areas and food court are served by a music and paging system based around Community’s I/O5, a compact 5-inch two-way indoor/outdoor system offering a 90 x 50 degree dispersion pattern that was ideally suited for the task.

“The original specification for the job had called for in-ceiling speakers,” recalls Robert Sims of Las Vegas-based Communication Electronic Systems, the firm that handled system design and installation for the job. “But when we got to the site and discovered that most of the ceiling was a metal grid, I knew we’d have to rethink the speakers, since any type of in-ceiling speaker would have created far too much vibration and interfere with the building’s aesthetics. I remembered how impressed we were with the I/O5 demo we’d heard, and it fit the project budget nicely, so I suggested them as an alternative, and the folks at UNLV readily agreed.”
Based on the I/O series’ extra-wide coverage pattern, Sims and the CES crew opted to place the speakers on the sidewalls above the grid of the long and relatively narrow space to further avoid excessive vibration. “I expected the speakers to sound good, but I was rather surprised at how broad the coverage is,” Sims added. “We’ve got the speakers moderately spaced throughout the corridors, with only one speaker every six to ten feet on alternating sides, but the sound is clean and consistent, with no drop outs or hot spots. We’ve got a considerable amount of processing and zoning capability in the system, but the speakers sound really impressive, even with everything running flat and unprocessed.”

CES also installed a complete A/V system in the Student Union’s movie theater, with HD projection on a 20 x 11 foot screen and audio comprising Community Professional’s SLS960 full-range horn-loaded loudspeaker systems and SBS25 subwoofers. “We time-aligned the subs to the main speakers and EQ’ed a bit to help compensate for the somewhat flat contour of the room, and that was it, in terms of installation,” Sims remarks. “It was absolutely painless.”

“We installed the entire low-voltage package for the building – audio and video, access control, fire alarm systems, wireless, telephone and data infrastructure,” Sims adds. The system also includes Crestron control in the theater and conference rooms, and BSS London DSP with custom wireless controls throughout the building.

Phase two of the new Moyer Student Union is slated to open next fall, along with demolition of the old Student Union.