A building designed with sustainability in mind, Toulouse Convention Centre is functional and emblematic, meeting the needs of professionals and the events industry, with facilities combining technology and flexibility. Recently, the Centre required a full audiovisual upgrade, allowing it to carry on serving as an important landmark in the events industry. GL Events, a French based integration company, was asked to help with the advancement, Romain Michallet of GL event’s Sales and Installation Department takes up the story: “We’ve been working with the management team at Toulouse Exhibition and Conference Centre for some time. We supplied audio, lighting and video equipment to really help the Centre reach its full potential.”
Starting with the audio, GL events worked with the management team on systems to suit the conference centre and exhibition hall, both of which had varying needs. The design process was simple, for the conference centre, Romain and the team worked around the main control room and distributed the sound out to the meeting rooms. For the exhibition hall, the system was designed to switch from one gauge to another easily and quickly, with only two technicians working at one time.
Bose was the desired brand for the sound system GL events installed inside the exhibition hall. “We chose Bose’s DM6SE loudspeakers because they offer rich lows and clear, intelligible highs — along with premium aesthetics that complemented the look and feel of this part of the venue,” said Romain.
Six to eight Bose DM6SE loudspeakers were installed in each room, along with a Soundcraft VI1000 mixing console in the control room with a rack containing seven P4300A Bose amplifiers and 30 Sennheiser EW500GA wireless hand microphones. GL Events also provided three Yamaha TF1 mixing consoles for local control.
“For the conference centre, the client required 12 sound systems – one in each modular hall and all connected to one control room, from where you can send any of the sources to any meeting room. They also needed 30 wireless handheld mics that could be used anywhere in the venue,” explained Gilles Ravet, Head of Installation at GL events.
The conference centre consists of 24 L-Acoustics KARA modular line source loudspeakers, along with eight L-Acoustics SB18 subwoofers. Also installed in the centre are 12 L-Acoustics X8 loudspeakers, 14 LA4X amplifiers and an L-Acoustics P1 processor. “We decided to use L-Acoustics in the conference centre because its loudspeakers are really great. The sound is perfect for both convention meetings and live music. They are also easy to use, and they age very well,” furthered Gilles.
GL events installed eight motorised trusses within the exhibition hall with all of the cables and loudspeaker fixations on each. “This gave us the ability to move the loudspeakers from one truss to another, and then reconnect the cables / change the angles where necessary. This is absolutely perfect for when you only have a day or night to completely change the set-up in the exhibition halls,” said Gilles. “The diffusion goes from 12 to eight L-Acoustics KARA and four to three SB18 subwoofers per side, with six KIVA in the centre, and some X8 and Syva on stage for the lipfills and frontfills. We also used a Soundcraft VI1000 mixer, which can be put anywhere in the venue because it can be directed to the Optocore network. The LA4X amplifiers are mounted on the footbridge and are also directly connected to the Optocore network.”
The installation of the network was carried out by Optocore’s long-term partner, Gilles Bouvard’s company GB4D, in close collaboration with the scenography company Ducks Scèno, headquartered in Villeurbanne-Lyon, under the direction of Aldo De Souza. The Bouvard team worked alongside Grégory Aldéa, Head of Audiovisual Projects at Ducks Scéno, on behalf of the MEETT consortium, Toulouse Métropole and GL events.
GB4D were able to meet the Consortium’s specification for a complex network that required the capacity to transmit sound, video, lighting and even IT.
Gilles set out the engineering challenges faced, and how BroaMan components provided the solution: “We conducted an in-depth study of possible future equipment, both upstream and downstream of our network. During the development phase, neither the scenographer nor I were aware of the audiovisual equipment that would be installed in the complex, so we made a possible hypothesis based purely on the plans.”
Read the full article below in issue 31.2 of mondo*dr –
