LEA amps add flexibility to Illinois complex
- Details
From corporate meetings, seminars, social gatherings, weddings, and more, the I-Hotel and Conference Centre in Champaign, Illinois, provides more than 70,500sq.ft of interior meeting space. This includes a modern exhibit hall that can accommodate up to 750 guests for a wedding reception, endless floorplan options for large conferences and expos, and seating for up to 1,200 guests, theatre-style. In total, they now have nine new, fully reconfigurable rooms, with audio powered by LEA Professional’s Dante Connect Series amplifiers.
Throughout the renovations and upgrades, Illinois-based C.V. Lloyde Audiovisual has been the I-Hotel's AV partner. C.V. Lloyde has provided audiovisual services to many of the region's most prestigious projects - including University of Illinois State Farm Centre, Memorial Stadium, Yahoo, Intel and John Deere.
In the first phase of the project, the team implemented an AV over IP network and an entirely new control system as the I-Hotel looked to upgrade their existing AV capabilities. Using portable input boxes, rooms can be set up as one-to-one, or combined presenting in one room with audiences in any number of other rooms. Phase two saw the expansion to the conference buildings which added six more large-scale banquet halls and three more smaller conference rooms. C.V. Lloyde provided full building matrix switching allowing combinable rooms for any event type.
Kyle Wikoff & Todd Fitton the System Design Team at C.V. Lloyde worked on the I-Hotel project, explained that I-Hotel management wanted to equip their new meeting spaces with high-quality, scalable AV systems. They also wanted to use the opportunity to upgrade their existing systems and tie them together for maximum, full-facility flexibility.
"At the I-Hotel, we're currently using AMX SVSI for AV transport, as well as an extensive Dante audio network,” explains Fitton. "The LEA amplifiers we're using are 100% Dante and IoT-enabled, so we were able to put the LEA amplifiers on their own kind of network to be able to reach the internet because that's not typical for the hotel facility - the remote connectivity is a huge LEA advantage for us, and the client loves it."
The I-Hotel and Conference Centre system is currently using nine 704D, Dante Conect Series amps for a total of 25,200 watts across 27 zones.
