Shining light

As Pro Audio Middle East takes its seat in the plush, modern surrounds of Doha’s Torch Hotel it is hard to take in all that has just been witnessed. From its high-tech, iPad-centric in-room A/V system to the Italian leather armchairs in the lobby, everything in the venue screams quality. Seemingly no aspect has been ignored in its quest to offer its customers the best.

Even sitting back in the comfortable surrounds of the lobby, the attention to detail is all-consuming. While the décor plays an important role in generating this feeling, it is the audio that completes the job. Listening to the BGM being piped out, it soon becomes clear that you can hear all of the music. Even at low levels, there is a clarity and depth to the sound not often found even in the best hotels.

Taking a deeper look at the surroundings explains the situation. Rather than the normal distributed ceiling speaker solution that is favoured by many venues the world over, The Torch has opted for a full-range Meyer Sound system that has been custom painted and discretely mounted around the hotel. The result, like the hotel itself, is quite simply stunning.

‘The owners wanted guests to be able to hear the full spectrum throughout the hotel,’ smiles a clearly very proud Hadi Arzouni, general manager of AV Tech – the company responsible for the installation. ‘The client was looking for quality first, which was why we used the small Meyer Sound MM-4XP speakers and MM-10 AC subs,’ he explains.

'We used the MM-4XPD because of its directional sound quality to cover the 20m high lobby,’ continues Mr Arzouni. ‘Even when we were just testing it out of the box with the subs in the lobby it sounded great. When it was connected to QSC’s Q-Sys, the sound quality was just amazing. Even without the tuning by Galileo it was perfect.’

This desire for quality has been employed for the whole audio chain. Products from companies including, QSC, RCF and Belden join Meyer Sound in the main areas of the hotel. While its meeting rooms also feature the likes of AMX, Extron, Allen & Heath and Sennheiser to go with the Californian manufacturer’s ceiling speakers and subs. ‘We only use high quality components, even down to the smallest detail,’ says Mr Arzouni. ‘Your system is only as strong as its weakest component.’

‘Being the most prestigious and biggest tower in Qatar, our task was to meet most complex applications to put in a most user friendly solution and quality and system redundancy being the focal points,’ furthers Pradeep Kumar AVTech’ s project manager. ‘The choice was clear for AV Tech, with high profile installations we always opt for Meyer Sound and Q-Sys. Instead of going for a 100V distributed system, we used self-powered speakers with enough sub woofers to ensure the full audio spectrum.’

The A/V solution, much like the 65-technian team that installed it, can easily be broken down into three areas. The main public spaces of the hotel, including the three-level lobby, as well as the restaurants, bars, pool, lifts and beauty parlours form the majority of the system. There are also separate offerings for the numerous conference rooms and business spaces which sit outside the main system and can be individually controlled, as well as the in-room A/V upon which the hotel prides itself.

The distinguishing feature of the audio chain in the 24 zones of public areas in The Torch is its control. Sitting in the rack of the main control room at the heart of the system is a pair of QSC Q-Sys Core 4000 units. These combine with 19 Q-Sys I/O Frames to supply and control the audio for the hotel’s public spaces, and again Mr Arzouni puts the decision for their use down to the quality they offer. ‘With Q-Sys, they have additional redundancy and performance,’ he states. ‘The client selected the Q-Sys system over other brands because if anything happened on the network, they would have immediate back-up.’

For this section of the project, AV Tech appointed K2 Audio as a consultant. ‘The programming for the Q-Sys was done by K2 Audio. It took two to three days for the complete programming of the system as K2 is a DSP specialist,’ says Mr Arzouni. ‘We appointed K2 as a consultant just to make sure that there were no mistakes on any system or during the design. We could not afford to miss anything as we did not have the time to find another option for the client due to the timescale.’

The timescale for the project is an issue that came up repeatedly for AV Tech. ‘We had to finish everything from commissioning, installation and testing in 90 days,’ recalls Mr Arzouni. ‘We had to submit a mock-up system to the client to show them how it would work, and we needed to show them every type of speaker to get it approved,’ he continues. ‘Our project management team worked with the client to get the approval of each item within 24 hours of demonstrating it to make sure we hit the deadline.’

As AV Tech was working to such a tight timescale the company worked in a very different way from its usual projects. ‘We had the first 30 days to put in all the cables we had available. The second month we started receiving some materials such as the racks,’ explains the general manager. ‘We didn’t have time to build everything in our warehouse first, we had to assemble it onsite,’ he reveals. ‘Whenever a partial speaker shipment arrived we would install them, test them then move to another one.’

Taking this approach the systems integrator was able to work on several different areas simultaneously before beginning integration with the main Q-Sys network. ‘For every level we had to put in a complete solution. Once this was in we had to connect it to the main system and make adjustments after analysing the sound,’ explains Mr Arzouni.

The timescale was the root cause of the main challenges for AV Tech. Finding a large enough volume of the Belden multi-core cabling to connect the Meyer cabinets was a significant task which resulted in air lifting rather than sea freighting. But perhaps the biggest obstacle came with aesthetics.

‘One issue that we faced during the installation was with the Meyer Sound ceiling speakers,’ recalls Mr Arzouni. ‘The client did not like the size of the grille,’ he explains. ‘The client wanted a smaller housing. We checked with Meyer Sound and they said it was possible but it would take another 25-30 days which was too long. We found small grilles for the system on the market, so we put the Meyer Sound speakers into these housings. We did this for 120 speakers in two days.’

Mr Arzouni is keen to play tribute to everyone involved in the installation, all of whom contributed to its success. ‘All the team worked hard on this one, even the client because he worked hard to get all the materials approved on time,’ enthuses the general manager. ‘Our staff worked really very hard over two shifts, all the project managers and site engineers. Every two or three days we had to go to the site with the client to check the progress of the work because we had to finish on time.’

By maintaining this level of vigilance the installation at The Torch was handed over on time. ‘Really everything was always on track. We never had any delays,’ says a very satisfied Mr Arzouni. ‘Even when we had some problems to sort out at the beginning, such as with the cabling, we solved it. Our main goal was not how much profit we could make, but hitting the deadline.’

Reflecting on the installation, Mr Arzouni knows how important it could prove to be for AV Tech. ‘This project has a lot of prestige for us. If we failed it would have been bad for our name. Now we have very good credit with the client because we supplied the best quality everywhere and we gave them the right design.’

Listening to the music while relaxing in the cavernous lobby of The Torch, it is hard to disagree with this point. Quality has certainly been the driving force for the whole hotel.

www.avtech.com.qa