The Stissing Mountain Junior/Senior High School is like many combined schoolhouses in rural America – part educational facility, part community meeting space, and often the most well-equipped location in town to host a live performance. Stissing Mountain easily checks all three capabilities for Pine Plains, New York, home to around 2,500 residents.
To ensure its facilities meet the community’s varied needs, the Pine Planes Central School District recently upgraded its AV capabilities utilizing a core of Ashly Audio amplification and control solutions.
“When you have a space that is truly the preeminent meeting and performance hall for a community, your primary concerns need to be that the system works well and is extremely intuitive to control,” said Thomas DePace of Advance Sound Company – the firm that integrated the new system. “What we found in Ashly Audio was a system that confidently checks those boxes and brings with it a ton of flexibility.”
In total, Thomas integrated an Ashly NE24.24M with a Protea DSP Audio Matrix Processor providing 12 inputs and 12 outputs, an Ashly NE24.24M with a Protea DSP Audio Matrix Processor with four inputs and four outputs, an Ashly NXE1.52 Network Power Amplifier providing 2 1,500 Watts @2 Ohms, an Ashly NXE8004 Network Power Amplifier delivering 4 800 Watts @2 Ohms and an Ashly NE8800MM Network Enabled Protea DSP offering eight inputs and eight outputs with two 4-channel Mic Cards.
“We’re using that full array of Ashly amplification to power multiple Danley speakers throughout the facility,” Thomas said. “Everything from larger speakers across the main auditorium to monitors and stage fills. The Ashly setup also has a very nice way in which it allows for mixing the system. The NE8800MM, for example, is providing all of the auto-mixing. It’s a decent amount of gear, and yet it’s all tied together with the perfect control: the Ashly FR-8.”
The FR-8 is one component in Ashly’s line of control offering that looks to elegantly streamline control for those who don’t have a background in live production. The FR-8 is an Ethernet device that provides fader-based remote-level control for NE products with DSP capabilities. The FR-8 controls up to eight user assigned inputs, outputs, or mixer outputs and can command multiple Ashly product lines.
“We were able to set it up so perfectly that I have no doubt that when the principal or custodian need to use the system it will be very easy for them to do so,” Thomas said. “When your customer is a small or medium-sized organization, having that confidence is a huge benefit.”
The system Thomas integrated also highlights Ashly’s interoperability. Components from Crestron, Christie, Panasonic, Allen & Heath, Sennheiser, and Danley also run throughout the integration.
“To use all of these manufacturers and recognize the core of it – from power to control – is Ashly is really impressive,” Thomas said. “Honestly, this is the first time we used Ashly Audio solutions. After hearing and seeing how well it turned out, we know we’ll be using many more in the future.”
