The Bangkok headquarters of TMB – previously known as the Thai Military Bank – is a 33-story building located in the Chatuchak district of the city. Inside the facility is a 500-seat, multi-purpose auditorium on its seventh floor that hosts conferences, press events, presentations, and even live music.
Because of this unique venue, TMB has found itself needing to invest in sensational sound – and that meant turning to Dante.
“The auditorium at TMB sees some very diverse use and it gets quite busy,” said Alfonso Martin, Head Engineer at Sonos Libra, the contracting firm that designed and installed the Dante-based audio network. “We knew from the start that the AV system needed to be cutting edge, it needed to be scalable and it needed to be high quality. When we submitted a bid to upgrade the facility, we knew from the start it needed to be done with Dante.”
Dante is a digital media networking technology created by Audinate that allows users to send uncompressed, multi-channel audio over a single Ethernet cable. It is the de facto standard audio networking solution, and has been adopted by more pro-audio AV manufacturers than any other networking technology. This makes interoperability easy, reliable, and a true reality.
Alfonso believes his company won the bid in part because they can offer Dante capabilities that enable flexible and future-proof solutions.
“It may seem a bit strange at first to think of a bank seeking out this level of audio capability,” Alfonso said. “But banks are associated with having extremely impressive technology, not just related to their banking, but in all levels of their work.”
Alfonso explained that the bank required a highly-customizable solution as the auditorium occasionally needs to reposition its equipment – and that needed to be accomplished with little effort. Further, the system needed to be capable of a quick upgrade if a demand for such a change arose. Specifically, Alfonso said, the system needed to be capable of adding additional remote I/Os.
The audio also needed to reach other areas of the building outside the auditorium – such as allowing announcements to take place in the lobby.
“In addition to those needs they obviously wanted a system that had extremely high-quality sound,” Alfonso said. “We needed to make sure it was ready for all types of use and that if a microphone needed to be added it could happen quickly and easily.”
The solution, Alfonso said, sits in a system designed with a Dante backbone. By building out a Dante audio network, Alfonso and his team ensured the bank can swiftly and effectively alter the configuration of equipment by simply plugging into an available network port – no need for cumbersome or expensive cable runs. Patch panels can also be quickly set up, Martin said, allowing for even greater flexibility.
A Dante network also reduces the interoperability challenge thanks to the more than 2,000 products that are now Dante native. And, because the network reaches beyond the auditorium, the ability to add sound to other areas of the facility is quickly realized without additional cable pulls.
“And of course, as with all our Dante installations, the sound is extremely high quality,” Alfonso said.
Alfonso and his team have installed the following Dante-enabled components to the workflow thus far:
2 Lab.gruppen D80 amplifiers
1 Lab.gruppen D120 amplifier
1 Allen & Heath DM0 rack with new 64×64 Dante Cards @ 96kHz
6 Xilica Rio R22-WP-X in-wall Dante I/O panels
1 computer with Dante Virtual Soundcard
He expects more Dante enabled components will be added as the facility continues to thrive and host additional events. Most importantly, however, is that the bank has truly noticed a positive difference in the events it currently hosts.
“The sound has been improved significantly,” Alfonso said. “And it really is a system that solves all the problems. They can easily press a pre-programmed button to host an event. They can utilize a plug-and-play system to add more devices. It’s very much a thing of beauty to see a Dante system in use like this, and seeing the customer being so happy with the results.”
