Dominated by a steel and glass recreation of a classic east coast lighthouse, the Casino New Brunswick is impossible to miss. Opened in May 2010, and located near Moncton, New Brunswick’s famous Magnetic Hill, the facility is the first of its kind in the Maritimes. Far more than a casino, the project also includes a 128-room hotel complex, a full spa and a 1,500-seat multi-purpose entertainment and convention centre, The Palladium, incorporating over $2 million dollars of state of the art sound, lighting and staging technology designed and installed by Westbury National Show Systems Ltd.
From design to completion the timeframe of the project encompassed seventeen months beginning February 2009. Westbury was brought in on the strength of the success of a prior casino project with the same client in Calgary, Alberta. “Because of our relationship they felt comfortable with our team’s ability to be able to put this project together,” says John Coniglio, Senior Project Sales at Westbury.
Based on that relationship, from early on in the design stage, both Coniglio and Westbury’s lead designer and senior project manager on the build, Guy Wallace, had a clear vision of what products would be employed to achieve their client’s vision and provide maximum intelligibility and coverage throughout the facility. “The client definitely wanted to go with something they knew worked. Having the experience with the other building showed them this is the way to go.” But, Coniglio stresses, had there been better way to move forward, the client was open to it. “For Westbury, when we first sat down and were choosing product, we said we would stick with the same product. There was no reason to change.”
“Getting above the ambient level of the floor and still having quality sound and excellent coverage without making the aural level of the floor too loud, that was the biggest challenge,” says Wallace. “The Tannoy CMS models are very musical sounding loudspeakers. We can easily turn them up to a comfortable volume. They don’t sound shrill when you’re trying to get over background noise. They lends themselves well to that sort of application.”
On the initial Calgary project, however, a little more convincing was required. “Basically,” explains Coniglio, “getting the client to recognize that higher quality audio was going to be required. Instead of going with a typical, inexpensive ceiling speaker, we bumped them up to the Tannoy. Once they heard the quality in that atmosphere they wanted to roll that into this project as well.” Similarly, the choice of Lab.gruppen amplifiers was based on the success of their previous project. “Again, we wanted to replicate what we had done previously and be able to create a lot of channels in not a lot of space.”
“Lab.gruppen is the only amplifier used throughout,” says Wallace. ““They offered exceptional quality and affordability in a smaller package and we have them driving the Moosehead Lounge’s ‘Moose’s Wild’ stage and all of the public areas.” In all 10 Lab.gruppen C 16:4’s in the casino audio rack, 5 C 28:4’s for the Palladium’s distributed audio system, 3 C 10:8’s for various areas of the hotel, 2 C 28:4’s driving the Moosehead’s mains and 1 C 48:4 for monitors.
While the Palladium employs a JBL Vertec self-powered rig for FOH, the monitor rig is driven by Lab.gruppen FP+ Series; 9 Lab.gruppen FP 9000’s, 5 FP 6000Q’s and 1 FP 4000. The choice of the FP+ series was based purely on performance for a more critical listening situation, Wallace adds.
“The part of the project that had the most Tannoy and Lab product was the gaming floor,” says Wallace. “You need a lot of coverage to maintain a comfortable listening volume for background music without causing too much noise over top of the machines. If you look at the gaming floor ceiling speaker layout you might say, ‘Wow that’s got way too many speakers’. But that’s to supply good, even coverage without turning it up too loud.”
Within the casino the distributed audio system is used for both live and prerecorded digital messaging, advertisements and general announcements as well as background music. A mandate Tannoy CMS 601’s fulfilled perfectly, explains Wallace. “It’s almost become a mainstay for us. We know what we can achieve with them going into a project and we know we’re going to have excellent quality for speech reproduction as well as background music.”
In all 117 CMS 601DC’s were installed above the casino floor, along with 4 CMS 801Subs placed in the central casino area. “That area is called the center bar,” Wallace says. “I wanted that area to be a bit louder and have some additional warmth and bottom end. We step down a level as we move away from the center and, as you move out, there are concentric rings of speakers that match the architectural rings of the ceiling. There are patches where there are no speakers, Wallace adds. “You usually don’t put speakers over gaming tables so card players can converse with the dealers.”
Beyond those installed on the gaming floor there are over 150 CMS 601’s throughout the casino, Palladium and hotel public spaces; from the hotel lobby and casino buffet, to specialty spaces like the gym, spa lounge and manicure rooms. CMS 601’s in tandem with 2 additional CMS 801subs also provide distributed audio in the casino’s second floor Ultra Lounge bar. Westbury also specified 16 Tannoy Di5t’s for various exterior spaces like the porte-cochère, where three pairs of the weather resistant surface mount speakers are mounted on opposing columns to provide background music for patrons entering the casino.
In the entire build there are approximately 60 discreet audio zones; 40 in the casino proper, 12 in the entertainment centre, and 8 in the hotel. Virtually all of the facility’s video sources are also available as an audio source in virtually any area. All controlled via a series of AMX NXT Series tabletop touch screens, DAS-MET-6N button panels and NXD1000vi touch panels.
Rather than extend distributed audio to the more intimate spaces of the spa’s treatment rooms, Westbury opted for a more readily personalized solution; 8 Tannoy i30 iPod docks with self-amplified dual concentric speakers, one for each room. A choice that offered not only a core benefit over cheaper, more generic, docks in terms of sound quality, but also allows therapists and clients the luxury of personally programming music for their sessions.
For this application, specifically a high usage, high volume environment, the choice of Tannoy and Lab.gruppen was a matter of the collective experience and knowledge Westbury brings to the table with over 30 years as a full-service entertainment technology company. “This is where the experience of our team comes into place. We felt this product was going to be the best choice,” says Coniglio.
Once again Westbury’s clients are eminently pleased with the result. “They are ecstatic,” says Coniglio. “From the basic standpoint that we were able to meet their requirements for making sure there’s good sound coverage in all the public spaces, meeting the budget and the schedule. And, on top of that, going into an area they haven’t gone into before – live performance – we went down an unknown road with them and satisfied them.”