Zolfo Cooper Meeting Room

SI Sound and Light have recently completed a Audiovisual presentation system for the newly refurbished offices of the Zolfo Cooper.

Working along with electrical contractor JG Mackintosh  SI provided installation, programming and commisioning of a simple but powerful audiovisual presentation system allowing computer, DVD and live TV sources.

Control for the system uses the a Pronto touchscreen controller along with the wireless extender which takes contol of the sources, screen and an AMX presentation controller which was programmed by our engineers to switch between PC Sources.

The result is an easy to use presentation system which exceeded the all the client expectations.

Links:

jgmackintosh

Zolfo Cooper

The organ is a permanent exhibit at the Grampian Transport Museum in Alford , Aberdeenshire and has been undergoing a major rebuild and restore project carried out by Jonathan Smith a specialist organ restorer.

The recording of this unique organ posed some interesting challenges for our engineers to capture a quality reproduction. The Transport museum is a steel building which suffers from a fairly high level of background noise caused by the weather vibrating the metal cladding of the structure.

The raw capture was edited using a digital process before the final edit was approved for duplication along with a printed CD and cover piece.

The result if a very professional product which is available to purchase direct from the Grampian Transport Museum.

Grampian Transport Museum

Entrepreneur Ellis Johnson has made a recent return to the pub business after a three year break, and brings 17 years of pub management experience to his Edinburgh venues. The Marmion on Captains Road, and The Rainbow in Drumbrae, are large scale, full facility community pubs in the heart of the city.

The Marmion is a vibrant superpub, with an extensive offering of high quality food. With its impressive scale, famous entertainment schedule, and welcoming atmosphere, The Marmion is right at the hub of its local community.

Both pubs have gathered a large local football following, and maintain a massive Sunday scene. Ellis shows Scottish League matches on the many plasmas in his venues, and once the match is over, he is able to offer his customers something extra, and keep them in for longer, with a bit of karaoke, some celebrity bingo, or a live action horse race!

It is crucial to respond to the particular requirements of the local community, and to look for unique business opportunities. Ellis has formed the Monday Club at The Marmion, when all the local taxi drivers pitch up for their days off. Ellis is able to offer them any entertainment they want, be it karaoke, Roulette, or Hi/Lo Cards, and says “it’s like a fairground in here, with so much going on!” It is also important to keep refreshing your entertainment schedule, and The Entertainer™ has allowed Ellis to develop some exciting new offerings, such as the already popular “Quiz and Bingo” nights.

Staff become entertainers!

Friday is signature night at both venues, with a tremendous cabaret, live acts and a whole cacophony of fun and thrills. The Entertainer™ is used instead of a DJ at the beginning and end of the night, cutting the need for any secondary events.
Like many other Mediatheme™ customers, Ellis has found that the Entertainer™ can save huge amounts on entertainment costs, and give a great deal of flexibility to the landlord. He says, “having bought the system, we don’t have to buy much else.” He added, “We use it every day as it’s so convenient – we no longer have to pre-plan our quizzes, karaoke, or race nights, we can be spontaneous, depending on the mood of our customers.”

Ellis is proud of the true community feel he has developed in each of his pubs. They provide a warm atmosphere for visiters, while maintaining a true community feel for the regulars. The staff and local customers know each other well, and they have great interaction. Ellis tells us that “different pockets of people will come in, and the staff know exactly what they want to do – they might put on a horse race or rude bingo, and they spur each other on.”

The Entertainer Pro™ has also helped Ellis overcome one of the main problems faced by landlords of multiple businesses, the issue of control. He says, “I have three pubs, and I can’t be in three places at once. The Entertainer Pro™ is really an extension strategy as it allows me to maintain key control of the atmosphere in two of them, as I know exactly what music is being played”. He added, “It allows me to manage more, with less input. We have an ongoing efficiency drive, and we are able to compete with Manchester United, with the budget of Watford. The Entertainer™ allows us to apply city standards to community based businesses.”

SI Sound and Light carries out installation and servicing work for Entertainer systems across Scotland and the North of England.

Mono's back bar in Blue!

Mono has been supplied with a variety of entertainment systems by Edinburgh based SI Sound and Light Ltd. SI carried out design, specification and bespoke construction work in creating the unique new clubbing venue.

The works completed for opening night included electrical design and contracting, Sound system design and supply, Digital lighting system, fibre optic and LED colour change thoughout the venue and a building management system to ensure the complete effect of the venue is maintainedthoughout it’s operational lifetime.

Fibre optic pillar with over 1000 tails!

The Architecual effect lighting is an integral part of the feel of Club Mono. Every surface and structure is creativley lit using full colour mixing Fibre optics and LED’s to enable an ever changing feel from the subtle to the dramatic. S I have developed a relationship with Advanced Fibre Optics in Barcelona who supplied the full CMY colour mixing sources and all fittings and fibre optic looms. All led colour change for fitted features was designed and constructed by SI’s Dan Aberdeen.

The architectural lighting is overlaid by more conventional disco effects lighting. In order to maintain the unobstrusive feel the lighting is fully recessed into the ceiling. Abstract AVR 8 units were used to cover the dance floor together with two Clay Paky miniscan HP3 effects and a centrally recessed Dataflsh in a custom reccess housing. The Sound system based on Nexo tops and Adlib Audio Sub units leaves no one searching for more.

S I Sound and Light supplied a sound system to an unbeatable specification using products from Nexo, JBL, Dbx, Crown and continuing their long standing relationship with Liverpool based Adlib Audio. The tops specified by SI Sound and Lights MD Neil SIlver were the stalwart Nexo PS15 boxes with analogue controller all Crown powered. For crucial bass end of the system Neil colaborated with dave fletcher at Adlib audio to specify two twin 15” and one 18” all hornloaded AA installation series boxes from Adlib audio. With JBL fills making up the bar and side of dance floor areas.

In the same unit SI Sound and Light provided a re-installation of a Bose® system for the exclusive Cocktail bar. The unit features custom DJ booth by SI Sound and Light along with single colour LED products including feature lighting from SI Sound and Light and Gwyn Carleaa Designs.

“Aberdeen’s premier cocktail lounge serving up an
outstanding array of cocktails on a fluid blend of
global house and r’n'b flavaz.”

Bar Aspen

SI Sound and Light were responsible for electrical, communications and controls contracting, Sound and Lighting design and installation, Audio Visual design and installation and a full custom control platform allowing scheduling of all building systems including dynamic advertising content served to the thirty eight LCD screens located around the venue.

The custom industrial screens used in the venue were specified to fit in walls, windows and booths allowing customers to always be in touch with the video content. Screens available in a host of sizes from 10.4 up to 42 inches with custom surrounds in any material imaginable. The options are endless including waterproof, internal and external units. Light fittings used throughout the venue are the most cutting edge in design and efficiency. LED units are used extensively with specialist power supply units giving a hugely increased lifespan over traditional lighting. S I Sound and Light has worked together with Mode Lighting for many years. Now with Evolution S I can bring together building control into a single box solution. The requirements for Aspen pushed the boat out with the control required to deal with audiovisual scheduling, ventilation, music scheduling and all the normal power saving and lighting controls.

custom av

The custom audio visual system allows display of live feed SKY television and extreme sports videos provided by the venue users themselves and by commercial advertisers paying for display space. The system allows for continuous updates without the attendance of a specialist engineer. The system is energy and product efficient by controlling the operational time of costly technical units and hence leading to a minimal servicing and replacement cost.

“SI are our Evolution experts in Scotland pushing the envelope and continually innovating on the base of our Evolution product”

-Sam Woodward,
(Product R & D) Mode Lighting

Owners of the well established A Room in the West End and A Room in the Town, have recently taken over Skippers and the Waterfront. Whilst Skippers has remained intact, what was the Waterfront has been completely refurbished and will now be known as A Room in Leith.

SI Sound and Lights involvement with the “room in” team continues a long served relationship having provided technical expertise at both the city centre restaurants.

The room in leith involved a full refurbishment of the waterfront premesis with supply audio and visual equipment along with a revolution digital music player from C-burn systems.

c-burn systems

SI Sound and Light have recently chosen C-burn as its preferred supplier of custom music players for commercial premises and the install at room in the Town was one of a number in the Edinburgh area.

cburn systems

A Room in Leith,
1c Dock Place,
Leith
Tel: 0131 554 7427

I visit many very expensive developments programming lighting controls. When we are just contracted to do the programming we arrive on site after all the first fixing has been completed and sometimes even later than that at a very late stage when the project is near to completion.

You can understand control panels for a lighting control system being placed in the traditional spot near the entry exit point of the room. I don’t think this is the future of lighting control and comes from the old technology of electric light switches but that is for different rant!

On many of these sites I find Audio Visual control panels in the same place at the entry exit point of the room.

When I was 16 I bought myself a simple Sony Midi System ( CD , Tuner ,Cassette ) with a simple remote control. This allowed me my first glimpse into luxury control!!

From the comfort of my bed or from my easy chair or indeed from my computer desk I could quickly and simply control my music for the room from each location. Not rocket science I hear you say but really effective simple control.

Move forward fifteen years and you would think that the intervening years would have moved us forward especially with a large budget on a multi-room penthouse

project. However even with a well known control system and a huge budget the control in the bedrooms of theses projects have arguably a less flexible and overall a lower overall standard of control than my bedroom did fifteen years ago.

Why ?

Who does the design of these projects ?

(I often find myself asking mostly under my breath). There are generally three different answers; The Salesperson of the control system told us to put them next to the light switches, The Electrician or developer who had no drawings had to make the decision and went with what they know, The Lighting Designer or architect who spent hours of quality work on the fixture placement and selection and did the controls as an after thought.

Am I being a bit harsh on all these individuals?

The Salesperson should not be doing the design of the lighting or of the controls. For one thing if a salesperson designs anything they will always design with a bias to there products which may not be the best solution. Design is an involved process that requires interaction with other design professionals involved who a sales person generally does not have access to.

The Electrician who does not have a drawing goes back to what they know. Electricians are trained in electrical system design. This design is design of systems to comply with the wiring regulations and the training does not extend to anything but simple positioning of items for ease of use. If I am being really harsh the level of training for lighting given to most electricians is limited to two-way switching with a number of sparks struggling with an intermediate. In fairness as well a building site with deadlines and other contractors is no place to be making cool calculated design decisions.

Lastly there is our Architect or Lighting designer who as I said has spent hours of time making a really great (hopefully) lighting design for the project. On a number of occasions that’s where they stop. The Drawings are produced with no thought to lighting control whatsoever. On many occasions the design is produced with no thought to maximum loadings of control gear which is really unforgivable but I would say that not thought to lighting control is equally wrong. In this article today I’m only talking about the relatively simple design decision of placement of controls not even looking at the next stage of what these controls do and how they interact with other control in different positions. The limit for most designers is to write a multi-scene scene setting for a system in the form of a table giving circuit numbers and relative intensities. On the placement of the controls the designers all seem to have been to the same training as the electricians and cannot bring themselves to look out of the box and try and make the design better. Architects and designers talk about movement of users through a design as a very important concept in the design process. In the modern automated house the movement of individuals is dictated by control of the lighting and audio visual systems within the space and should hence get a healthy proportion of attention from professionals with suitable understanding in controls at the design stage.

Lighting controls can serve many purposes. In a commercial project they can ensure that the designers vision is maintained night after night, year after year hence realising the value of the design work maintaining the “look” In this application the placement of controls is usually quite simple but I still see horrific examples of getting it wrong. In Domestic properties the placement of controls is much more complicated. Modern designs involve open plan areas with many entry and exit points within large open spaces. The solution given is often to throw loads of controllers at these points and have them all providing the same functionality.

Neil Silver is the Technical Director of S I Sound and Light

He is an Electrical and Electronic Engineer with many years experience in controls, Audio Visual and Lighting Systems

www.sisoundandlight.co.uk

Mirror Ball Ceiling

Establishment In Edinburgh’s West end required design of a full sound and lighting system    providing maximum quality and effect without distracting from the stylish modern design and branding of the club/lounge concept. In addition the varied music policy of the venue required a DJ booth set-up which covered all eventualities but still allowed simple operation by the venue managers.

The main dance floor area utilises four JBL SP212-9 Bi-amped and two fully refurbished Sherman Commando Bass Bins located under the raised seating off the Dance floor. The main peripheral areas use JBL Marquis series delayed correctly to allow operation in time to the dance floor bass end. The VIP area utilises refurbished JBL control One’s which in addition to having their own delay setting may be controlled by an independent level control located behind the VIP bar. The System is controlled using a dBx Driverack 482 Slave with an installed data link to a RS232 socket in the DJ booth allowing local tuning of the system using a laptop computer.

Effect Lighting

The lighting system features a half mirror ball theme with a series of small 12 inch half mirror balls lining the raised seating area, lit from the floor. The centrepiece of the dancefloor and indeed the club itself is a canvas drape feature finishing in an enormous 39″ half mirror ball suspended in the centre of the raised area above the dancefloor. Four Showtec Typhoon 150s provide lighting of the mirror ball and the whole dancefloor area. In addition during the early parts of the evening they project branding logos onto various surfaces within the club. The final effect uses the Antari Low fog machine. This creates a low floor hugging ‘dry ice’ effect by using ice cubes from the bar’s ice machine. The combined effect of the lighting and low smoke creates a subtle impressive show without affecting the style of the venue.

DJ Booth

The DJ booth was required to be operational by two DJ’s concurrently using a potential of seven sources at any one time. The Wiring of two Pioneer DJM-3000 mixers in parallel on both the source and output side allowed the possibility of this. The DJs may access all four Technics 1210s, both CD drives and an external Minidisc input from both mixers at any one time and also have control over the booth monitor and individual master control.

Due to the remote location of the amplifiers and control gear a complex power switching method was designed to allow simple operation by the clubs duty managers. This uses an EMO remote switcher and a series of time delayed contactors switching the various different parts of the system both on and off in the correct sequence.

Both the quality of installation and end result have met with acclaim from all who have come in contact both from a professional and ‘punters’ perspective