Project Team

Builders/Architects: Paynter Dixon
Lighting and Audio-Visual consultants
: Haron Robson
AV Contractor: Saltec

Suppliers

Audio: Bosch
Lighting: Show Technology
Truss: Design Quintessence
Control:
AMX
Carpet: Tascot
Wall Panels: Loop Textiles

Bankstown Sports Club, one of the leading event centres in Sydney’s south-west, has taken its events and banqueting facilities to a new level with the opening of the luxurious Grand Ballroom.

Award-winning Builders/Architects Paynter Dixondesigned and built the new building. “The club wanted a state-of-the-art venue; the very best in Sydney,” says Paynter Dixon’s marketing director Greg Howard. “With warm, gold-brown interiors and 5-metre (14-foot) ceilings, the overall visual effect is stunning.”

As well, the technical capabilities of the new room make it a unique venue in Australia. The lighting and sound system is at the forefront of technology and is,

without doubt, one of the most technologically advanced system installed in any function venue in
Sydney or indeed Australia. The effects lighting system alone has more automated lights per square metre than any other venue in Sydney.

“Working closely with the project manager Paynter Dixon Constructions, we have help create a venue that was easy for the Av contractor to install and that is now easy for the operator to run,” commented Glen Haron, managing director of Haron Robson. “We got this result because we understand the business of venues, building design and electrical technologies - a unique package. At Bankstown Sports the client had a dream, not a nightmare, and we made it so.

Lighting
The designers brief was to provide a lighting system that could satisfy all the requirements of the multiple uses that this facility offers, such as exhibitions, conferences, corporate promotions, weddings, dinners and even major performance by international artists.

To do this Haron Robson had to design a multi-purpose integrated house and effects lighting system with a sophisticated yet simple to operate control system.

The multipurpose general house lighting includes a unique three lamp recessed downlight containing three individually switched lamps controlled by the house lighting control and dimming system. The lamps utilised are a 150watt metal halide lamp for exhibition and corporate promotions, a 70 watt metal halide lamp for cleaning and pre-show set up and a 90 watt tungsten halogen dimmable lamp where lighting scene control is required, such as performance, weddings, dinners and presentations. This special light fitting was sourced from a leading European lighting manufacturer and it’s installation in the Grand Ballroom is one of the first of its kind in Australia. The criteria for it’s use was the reduction of the number of light fittings punctuating the detailed ceiling features reducing visual clutter, but more importantly the reduction of energy use with only specific lamps operating to suit the task and of course the embodied energy saving achieved in the manufacturing process by only requiring a third of the light fittings to achieve the same quantity and quality of light. For each type of use a lighting preset has been pre - programmed for each lighting level within each type of use, i.e. Pre – Dinner, Dinner and After Dinner, all these presets are achieved with single digit operation at either the AMX or Dynalite lighting control system touch panels. These panels utilise easy to use prompt software with varying levels of operating access.

In addition to the special three lamp multi-purpose downlight, there are nine beautiful purpose designed glass feature pendants, six large circular type in the high ceiling areas and three large square type in the lower ceiling area at the rear of the Ballroom. The large circular features consist of a staggered series of suspended glass tubes each having a dimmable bi pin lamp softened by locating behind a opal section of the glass tube. If you look carefully, you will notice that the lamp position in each tube is also staggered to give further visual dimension to these splendid chandeliers. As well as using the conventional lamps


within these fixtures, we selected glass elements so
that we could turn off the integral bi pin lamps and then utilise the effects lighting fixtures to change the chandeliers to be any desired colour. This again adds to the endless number of lighted scenes that can be achieved.

An AMX control system is installed to provide integration between the Dynalite digital lighting control system, the sound systems, video system and effects lighting system. It acts as a simple to use interface for the whole system operation. It provides twenty-four (24) presets for the house lighting and twenty-four (24) presets for the effects lighting with endless combinations of the two sets of presets to create a seemingly endless number of scenes to cater for any technical requirement of the Grand Ballroom.

The effects lighting system comprises six large motorised diamond-shaped trusses surrounding six smaller inner diamond-shaped trusses housing sixty
Martin SmartMAC Moving Head Luminaires, eight Martin MAC250 Entour Moving Head Luminaires, and sixteen Martin MX 10 Extreme Moving Mirror Luminaires, controlled by a grandMA Lighting Control System.

With this comprehensive set up of Martin effects lighting the venue has been given extreme flexibility; tables can be lit with multiple colours and patterns, including logos, the walls and ceiling can be coloured in any colour you desire and multiple rotating gobos patterns can be projected on the walls, the floor and the ceilings.

”The Martin smartMACs have no fans and therefore no noise,” commented Glen Haron, managing director of Haron Robson. “This is imperative for corporate events. This also allows for less maintenance or potential for breakdown. Improved optics, easy gobo change for corporate logos, energy efficient running and a 9,000 hour lamp-life provide endless possibilities for lighting shows to support the various types of activities in the room.”

The low power draw of the effects lighting and the on/off functions being controlled by the AMX system means that the power is only on when the system is being used, with no stand-by power drain. The improved optics and lamp type of the smartMAC is 40% more efficient than any other equivalent fixture type.



Design Quintessence Truss

The bold geometric lines of the ceiling see diamond shapes suspended above the grand ballroom floor. It was important to Paynter Dixon that the ceiling lines were maintained so any lighting would be required to be out of view when not in use. Haron Robson designed the light fittings to be supported by motorised truss structures that would be lowered for functions then return to the ceiling space when not necessary. Mal Barnes from Haron Robson spoke to Ian Wood at Design Quintessence about custom-made truss.
“Mal explained the limited space available and the critical need for the truss to fit within the diamond-shaped voids in the ceiling space,” Ian Wood, managing director of Design Quintessence explained. “We suggested F33 Truss as it could fit within the fairly narrow voids yet would have the strength to support the designated light fittings. We’re used to creating and working with all sorts of custom designs with very low tolerances so it was a fairly straight forward job for manufacturing once I had completed the fabrication drawings. The builders were surprised just how accurate the truss diamond shapes were and the club was very pleased with the end result.”

Design Quintessence





Audio
A network of Electro-Voice ZX1i 2-way Speaker Enclosures located on the motorised trusses hidden in the ceiling voids provide a very even distribution of high quality background music and high intelligibility speech reproduction throughout the room.

An E-V XLc Line Array is in the main function room driven by Dynacord PowerH amplifiers using FIR filters.

Sound reinforcement for live entertainment is supported by a Roland forty-eight channel digital mixing console and a front of house sound system consisting of two drops of Electrovoice Xlc Line Arrays with flying dual 15” subwoofers and ground stacked dual 18” subwoofers.

E-V NetMax N8000 is the heart of the system with all elements connected to it via the CAN Bus. IRIS-Net monitors and controls every element in the system including NetMax, Dynacord PowerH and E-V
Precision Remote amplifiers and E-V REV wireless microphones via the CAN Bus. This results in a fully remote controlled, monitored and supervised system.

PowerH amplifiers offer complete remote control and monitoring functions along with FIR filters for complete control.

FIR filters are not new in themselves; new are the methods for their development and implementation.  Modern hardware is finally able to deliver the computing power and performance required to perform FIR processing, a significantly higher order of computing power than IIR processing. EV’s new generation of FIR-Drive hardware does this, including the RCM-26 Remote Control Module for the PowerH series of amplifiers, and the new NetMax N8000-1500 Digital Matrix Processor.


FIR-Drive is the name that EV gives to its entire range of FIR offerings, including FIR-capable processing hardware, custom FIR speaker setting files and related software. FIR-Drive systems provide a flat, smooth frequency and phase response, uniform directivity at crossover frequencies, smoother total output power, and better overall sound quality and require less equalisation and tweaking during set up and tuning.

EV takes things substantially further by utilizing FIR filters for both crossover and EQ correction - within a single filter to achieve a linear phase, highly optimized response for an EV loudspeaker system across its entire bandwidth. They start with anechoic measurements of the loudspeakers, then put the measured data through a series of patent-pending engineering tools that calculate the FIR coefficients.  These co-efficients are exported into a custom “speaker setting” file that is specific to the particular loudspeaker being used. They offer custom FIR preset files for all of their concert loudspeaker systems and for various other EV and Dynacord models.

E-V REV wireless microphones and wireless headsets are available for presenters as well as DVD/CD/VCR Player/Recorders. Shows can be recorded to DVD or audio only direct to a USB stick from the digital mixing console.

E-V REV wireless microphone systems with one touch clearscan provide the ultimate in interference-free voice reproduction. Clean, clear, evenly distributed, speech with high intelligibility to every seat in the house.

Music reproduction with outstanding sonic quality from a line array system that was specifically designed to meet the challenges of this type of venue. Suitable for a trio or a major recording artist.


Electro-Voice ZX1i

The Electro-Voice® ZX1i is the new standard of uncompromising audio performance and versatility in an easy-to-install, compact sound reinforcement package. The ZX1i’s enclosure geometry has been engineered to provide maximum rigidity and acoustic performance. The velocity compensated port design allows for exceptional low-frequency response without vent noise.

ZX1i installation is incredibly simple with the included QuickSAM mounting system. The QuickSAM system is a unique, integrated mounting bracket that is virtually foolproof. It allows installers to simply snap the speaker onto the bracket, and tighten it to the desired position. For array mounting, an optional array bracket kit is available, which allows multiple units to be mounted together for a variety of configurations. All Zx1i “t” versions use a special circuit that, when in transformer mode, re-configures the network to a current-actuated, Hi-Pass filter at the transformer primary. It gently rolls off the lowest frequencies to maintain a safe load on the amplifier without affecting higher (vocal) frequencies and the program continues without interruption. Low-frequency current is limited through the transformer-eliminating low-frequency saturation.

Automatic Saturation Compensation allows many speakers to be run on a distributed line with a 50Hz Hi-Pass filter before the amplifier, regardless of the number of speakers on the same line (the number of tapped watts cannot exceed the amplifier rating). With the same 50Hz Hi-Pass, 10 speakers on transformers will have the same full sound as a single speaker at eight ohms.
Bosch