Alongside Georgia’s Stone Mountain Park’s natural glory, crowds regularly come to see the laser, firework, pyrotechnic and projection show that has operated on summer evenings since 1983. Additionally, there is the Geyser Towers playground, Sky Hike family ropes adventure course, a children’s activity area and the Crossroads Base Camp with restaurants, retail stores, a movie theatre, mini-golf and craft stores. Less spectacular but equally impressive is the Full Spectrum audio installation, which is based around a Symetrix SymNet Edge Dante networked audio DSP system.
‘The owners built Crossroads about a decade ago, and the original sound system did a passable job of supplying background music,’ explains Full Spectrum partner, Paul Creasy. ‘But as the development grew and several of the establishments set their sights on more and different events, the constraints of the original system became apparent.
‘The upshot was that they needed something that was completely flexible. Moreover, the owners wanted to expand system coverage to several of the other attractions, but they didn’t want to have to start from scratch every time they expanded. The Symetrix SymNet Edge DSP system offers the perfect solution. Each Edge frame has modular I/O, and its open architecture programming allows us to customise system features and performance. The fact that the Edge DSP system networks via Dante will allow us to easily expand across the park.’
The network will grow and eventually take in all of the park’s attractions via an inexpensive Cat5 network. Currently, eight SymNet Edge frames populate Crossroads, each in a different building.
‘We do niche A/V,’ Creasy says. ‘You can’t call up a preset for a place like Stone Mountain Park. I appreciate the flexibility and intuitive layout of SymNet Composer open architecture software. It’s easy to work with, even with a complex system like this one. Moreover, any time I have a question, Symetrix’ tech support is available and ready with an answer.’
Within the coming year, Full Spectrum plans to expand the sound reinforcement system via Dante and additional remote Edge DSP units to incorporate the Plantation, the Sky Ride cable car complex and Stone Mountain’s famous laser show.
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