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

Also this process involves removing two covers from your Technics and hence exposing bare connections to electrical terminals potentially at mains voltage.

The fabulous 1200 MKII and 1210 Mk II DJ turntables from technics are like a reliable car they go on and on as long as you look after them.

The pitch is one of the most common things to start causing you problems and is of course crucial to any DJ who is beat matching. When your turntable starts slipping its pitch or takes the occasional crazy you must get it sorted out or risk looking like a beginner when out playing your latest set.

There is of course the possibility that you need something replaced ( I will touch on this at the end) by an experienced technician and the process of setting up you pitch is something that does require specialist test equipment and an understanding of all things technical.

Lets Get started.

You need to turn off the power to your turntable and remove the plug from the wall.
Remove the platter by placing one finger in each hole and pulling directly upward. This can be quite tricky and you must make sure to pull straight upwards with equal force so as not to damage the central spindle.

Under the platter you will find there is a black vented panel held doen by about five philips screws. Undo these to reveal the motor and control board. The area will look a bit like this but with lots more colourful components (just the ones you need to know about are here).

To make this adjustment you will need a frequency meter that is acurate to two decimal places at a up to 500kHZ range. Most good multimeters will give this functionality.

Set you pitch fader to the zero position and ensure the green light lights up.

Place the two probes of you meter on the two test points marked in red and have a small philips screw driver ready to adjust the pitch control adjustment VR301.

ENSURE THAT YOU ARE WELL CLEAR OF THE POWER SECTION OF THE UNIOT TO THE RIGHT HAND SIDE OF THE BOARD SHOWN ABOVE.

No you need to plug in the unit and turn the power on using the power on knob.

Your meter should hope fully read something around 260kHz.

Adjust the Variable resistor (VR301) until you achieve 262.08kHZ plus or minus 0.05kHz

Turn off the power and re-assemble the unit.

You turntables pitch has now been correctly calibrated to the zero point of you pitch slider.

This is important so that your tunes play at the right speed but can also cause problems at the extremities of th pitch fader if the value is to far away from the nominal value.

The next step is to adjust your pitch variance which I will come back to in a future post

Neil Silver
SI Sound and Light and Quality DJ

Check out our new project

Lighting Control

May 22, 2008 – Sound Technology plc has acquired Harman Professional Distribution Rights in the UK and Ireland from Harman International Industries Inc. The agreement transfers to Sound Technology a strong team of sales professionals and exclusive distribution rights for class-leading brands such as AKG, BSS, Crown, dbx, JBL Professional, Lexicon and Soundcraft in the U.K. and Ireland.

The statement from Harman International reads:

The agreement transfers to Sound Technology a strong team of sales professionals and exclusive distribution rights for JBL Professional, Crown, Soundcraft, AKG, dbx, BSS Audio and Lexicon products in the U.K. and Ireland.

“Sound Technology is a premier pro audio distribution business in the U.K. and Ireland with strong market knowledge and a commitment to selling systems across Harman’s served vertical markets,” said Blake Augsburger, Harman Professional Chief Executive Officer. “This direct-to-third-party shift provides Harman the entrepreneurial drive necessary to support its international go-to-market strategy.”

“We are thrilled to be representing the legendary professional brands of Harman International,” said Robert Wilson, Chairman of Sound Technology plc. “The acquisition of Harman Pro’s UK distribution with its portfolio of advanced solutions reinforces Sound Technology’s position within the M.I. industry whilst substantially expanding and diversifying the company into the vertical markets of installation, broadcast and touring sound.”