The Querétaro Centro de Congresos in the city of Santiago de Querétaro, Mexico serves as the premier professional meeting space for the state of Querétaro. The stunningly designed building can host more than 15,000 people divided across multiple spaces.
Its Aqueduct Rooms – which comprise of 10 different rooms with a capacity for 150 people each – and its Constitution Room – which can hold a large meeting of up to 80 people – are packed year-round with a variety of in-person briefings, conference calls, seminars, corporate breakout sessions, and other events.
The location is also home to the Querétaro Teatro Metropolitano – which includes a 1,345-person theatre, a dance room, and an “experimental” room where live performances take place.
The unifying factor across the multi-use campus? A scalable and interoperable AV-over-IP system backed by Audinate’s Dante.
Dante is the de facto standard for digital audio networking, and distributes hundreds of uncompressed, multi-channel digital audio channels via standard Ethernet networks, with near-zero latency and perfect synchronization. Dante allows audio, control, and all other data to coexist effectively on the same network.
The Querétaro Centro de Congresos’s individual meeting rooms are key rental locations in the facility. The 80-person executive board room and the 150-person meeting room allow for key government meetings, breakout sessions during conventions, and private meetings to be held for anyone that may be renting the building.
Further, the main event room – capable of holding around 12,000 people – is often partitioned into smaller spaces for meetings to take place.
Ivan Romero, Director of Ponle Audio, the company that integrated the system, said because different configurations for meetings are often requested, the management of the spaces used to require a heavy lift on the part of the IT staff.
“The way things used to work, when we used traditional cabling, you basically needed one technician for every room,” said Joel Ramírez, Production Supervisor at the location. “When the building was busy, which it often was, that was extremely hard to manage.”
Further, every renter of the space – from medical conventions to government hearings – had their own specific needs and setup requirements.
“This was never about just reducing the amount of work,” said Héctor Quintero Martínez, Head of Operations for the facilities. “We honestly needed to get to a place where the customer wasn’t worrying about any setup at all. They just want to come in and use the system, so we needed it to be seamless.”
A Dante-backed system provides just that: a frictionless integration of any type of audio equipment that might be used during a meeting, presentation, or performance. More than 500 manufacturers produce more than 2,800 Dante enabled products – the result: optimal interoperability.
“Most microphones and all speakers are Dante-enabled,” said Héctor, “We can control the system from a central location where we use a central DSP and route audio to the 10 different locations. Control panels for each space mean we can offer them a level of local control as well. This setup also allows us to offer service packages that are definitely going to meet the needs of anyone who is using the space.”
An example Héctor gives: backup microphones in the building are all set to join the Dante network once they’re powered on. If a show or corporate meeting client arrives and suddenly needs far more microphones than was previously thought – a request that tends to happen last minute – the change is as simple as handing them more microphones. They simply plug the microphone into the Bose ControlSpace XLR wall plate, and they’re ready to have a meeting.
“No more running cables,” said José Enrique Pérez, head of forums at the location. “It is honestly amazing how much this has improved things. It’s amazing to see it work, and it’s incredibly easy to use.”
Audinate, the creators of Dante, recently launched a resource site looking at how Dante is facilitating corporate environments to return to work during the global pandemic. By using an audio-over-IP backed system, firms of all types and size are able to quickly and effectively space out participants through the safe addition of networked microphones, loudspeakers, and other AV equipment.
The result is a system free of incongruity between remote participants – whether they be in two separate meeting rooms in the same building, or located in multiple locations around the globe.
