By Shure
With more than 50 destinations across Europe, Event Hospitality Management Holding GmbH & Co KG currently operates more than 80 business and conferencing hotels in Germany, Italy and The Netherlands under its ‘EVENT Hotels’ brand.
In order to ensure that its high standards are met across all its 3-, 4- and 5-star facilities, the group’s corporate management regularly liaises with the directors of each hotel, with the focal point of these important meetings being the large conference room at the corporate headquarters situated in Cologne on the banks of the River Rhine.
In February 2019, work finished on an ambitious installation which featured Shure’s Microflex Complete Wireless Solution, complemented by an IntelliMix P300 Conferencing DSP Processor. The system was planned and installed by systems integrator TASCAN.
Due to the conference room being an oblong shape, the previously installed conferencing system was unable to guarantee speech intelligibility during large meetings, affecting participants both in the conference room and at external locations, which led to a negative impact on internal and external collaboration and wider teamwork contribution.
Having opted to comprehensively modernise its on-site media technology, the company also decided to bring the audio system up to date with a new, state-of-the-art solution.
Given the challenging room shape and dimensions, Cologne-based integrator TASCAN needed a flexible conferencing system that was also user friendly and simple to operate. With The team at TASCAN designed and implemented a solution that would improve not only speech intelligibility at the main conferencing venue, but also provide off-site meeting participants with high-quality audio streams.
With the project brief specifying a wireless system, the system would be required to operate error-free, despite the large number of technology and media companies in Cologne and the rising use of wireless frequencies nearby.
Another requirement was that the system allow integration of analog AV hardware codecs as well as ensure that laptops and other computers could connect with the central control unit.
TASCAN Systems installed a total of 16 MXCW640 Wireless Conference Units in the room, each fitted with an MXC420DF/C condenser gooseneck microphone catering for up to 32 meeting participants. Using an MXCWAPT Access Point, the wireless signals are routed to an IntelliMix P300 DSP processor via Dante before being provided to the video and audio conference.
A 4.3” colour touchscreen situated in the rooms displays the speaker order and can also be used for voting. The MXCW640 Wireless Conference Unit offers flexible configuration options and can be placed on surfaces anywhere in the room. The integrated speaker of the MXCW640 also provides additional advantages that help meetings run smoothly – with each unit functioning as a loudspeaker, the system provides significantly improved communication between participants around the elongated conference table.
“The flexibility of the automatic frequency management, paired with the excellent audio quality, was the clinching argument for us to select the Shure Microflex Complete Wireless System,” explained Abdelaziz El Jaouhari, Projects & Sales Manager at TASCAN Systems.
“The management team at Event Holding was also impressed at the way the P300 DSP processor was integrated quickly and easily into the video conferencing system via Dante.”
Jaouhari concluded: “The customer has reported back to us on the uniformly positive user experience with the Microflex Complete Wireless system.”
