Among Canada’s top universities, Simon Fraser University (SFU) has campuses in three of British Columbia’s largest cities — Burnaby, Surrey and Vancouver. Last year, the university replaced a ten-year-old amplifier system in order to create a new learning environment for students.
When some of the previous amplifiers powering classrooms began to fail, Adrian Bisek, A/V System Designer at SFU Surrey campus, called on SC Media to find the best technology to support the university for the next decade. In his role, Bisek is responsible for the design and implementation of audiovisual systems for the school. His department supports all classroom learning, collaboration, interaction at distance, and communication to large audiences, as well as supporting university administrative and research objectives.
After a meeting with, SFU opted for 12 Connect Series 84D amplifiers from LEA Professional to provide the power, performance and connectivity needed at a price point that fit the university’s budget. The amplifiers are currently serve the university’s standard-sized classrooms.
‘After an introduction to LEA Professional, we were able to have our detailed questions answered about the products we were interested in,’ Bisek says. ‘We focused on the power capabilities, GUI interface, and networking security. SC Media’s Technical Support were very knowledgeable about how their devices worked and were able to get us all the information we required for our team. Afterward, we felt confident knowing how LEA Professional had come about, their products, and how they supported their customers.’
The LEA Professional Dante Connect Series amplifiers are suited to small- to medium-scale installations. The range of two-, four- and eight-channel amplifiers features direct HiZ (70V or 100V) or LoZ, selectable by channel. And with three ways to connect, system designers can engage the built-in Wi-Fi access point, connect to the venue’s Wi-Fi, or use the Fast Ethernet to connect to any local area network via Cat5 or Cat6 cable. The Dante Connect Series also features analogue inputs and Dante inputs and external I/O control for remote on/off and fault monitoring.
‘We haven’t implemented Dante on our campus network yet, however as more A/V devices are put on the network, we wanted to make sure that we have industry standard equipment with the latest technologies available,’ Bisek says. ‘Dante helps simplify installations by configuring audio signal on the network, which may help us with future requirements for classroom overflow, or supporting student learning in a hybrid environment – we do what we can to install for today, and be prepared for tomorrow.’
Bisek undertook the installation with his team at the university, and reports that the process went well. ‘The challenge is usually setting up the IP configuration on different private networks with most devices, but the LEA amps allow the set-up to happen over Wi-Fi which makes it simple to configure with our phones.
‘When we initially installed these devices, we contacted Technical Support with some configuration and PoE questions. LEA quickly resolved everything. We were able to easily set up the amps to have two or three channels in 8Ω and the fourth channel in 70V high impedance. The straightforward browser-based GUI and network monitoring ability out of the box is a bonus. Overall, the communication and support with LEA Professional was top notch and we were very happy once everything was working perfectly.’
