Pro AV providers and manufacturers are also corporate entities, and image matters, both figuratively and literally. When it comes to their headquarters, lobbies, and showrooms, the power of AV is the central message, and sound, image, and hands-on reality can speak louder than any sales pitch.
Over the last 30-plus years, CCS Presentation Systems grew from two employees to over 350 with offices in 17 states. When CCS designed and built a new national headquarters in Mesa, AZ, it was designed to not only serve employees but showcase the company’s capabilities and services. The lobby in particular was a focus, so CCS turned to technology partner Sharp to design the main feature of the large space, a 90-degree wraparound dvLED wall. With a detailed vision in mind, Sharp, CCS, and design agency OpenEye Global collaborated to bring the lobby to life.
So how to best captivate visitors and provide the best possible visual experience as soon as individuals came through the doors? It was imperative that the technology operated perfectly, obviously, and communicated the company’s aesthetics. The team knew a traditional corporate lobby design wouldn’t work.
The team used two direct-view LED walls featuring the NEC LED-FE015i2 1.5mm pixel pitch modules to make the 90-degree, wrap-around corner unit. “We were really aiming for a ‘wow’ factor,” said CCS’ Chief Marketing Officer Julie Solomon. “In our line of business, visuals are key.”
Capitalizing on immersive technology, OpenEye Global’s Senior Creative Producer, Douglas Dowson, liked the way NEC’s dvLED displays rendered content and how it appeared seamlessly and clearly across the large canvas. The pastiche of beautiful nature interspersed with AV product highlight reels create a distinctive first impression for CCS.
“From epic nature scenes to a forced perspective brand highlight, this 90-degree design completely invigorated the space,” said Dowson.
“As soon as people walk into the building, it’s the first thing they see, and the first thing they compliment,” noted Solomon. “It’s just so incredibly striking.”
The environment also offers the perfect setting for hosting events and seminars with highly collaborative and modern features, including a two-story lobby opening out to a multi-functional indoor/outdoor café event space and training center. Large glass movable walls and an oversized garage door led to an outdoor amenity patio that can quickly transform the area into an event space large enough for more than 250 guests with the LED wall visible from various locations and angles, providing a content centerpiece that keeps the brand image alive within the space.
Sometimes a branded space needs to be a kind of worksurface where visitors can wrap their heads around the experience of AV technology and delve into hands-on details. Extron maintains a growing portfolio of experience centers worldwide. This time, however, the new experience is an Event Center at the mothership, on campus at the company’s global headquarters in Anaheim.
The main presentation room features a pair of stunning videowalls featuring Daktronics direct-view Chip on Board (COB) LED displays, both enabled by the Extron Quantum Ultra II 8K videowall processor. The Event Center is equipped with a full NAV AV-over-IP system with over 175 endpoints, audio solutions featuring Extron amplifiers and speakers, control via TouchLink Pro touchpanels, streaming with SMP technology, and dynamic content switching using the ISS 608. With intelligent theatrical lighting and multiple PTZ cameras, the center is engineered to provide an integrated AV experience for any event or demonstration.
Also featured are two application-specific demonstration spaces. The C2 Theatre simulates a command and control environment with a videowall that can be used to present content from dual-display workstations, video servers, and NTPsynchronized virtual clocks with multiple time zones. The Esports Suite features five gaming stations with player cameras which can be presented on the room display, or at the shoutcaster desk for annotated, play-by-play commentary.
“Our new Event Center was designed to help people and ideas reach their fullest potential with the help of AV technology.,” said Casey Hall, Chief Marketing Officer at Extron.
In addition to the presentation room and demonstration spaces, the Extron Anaheim Event Center features a dedicated New Product Showcase where guests can explore the latest Extron products through hands-on demonstrations. Extron expert technology specialists are on-site to provide personalized product insights, showcase capabilities, and answer any questions. With versatile room layouts, interactive product demo spaces, and integrated streaming capabilities, the venue is ready to host all kinds of events, from product launches to industry summits for Extron and its industry partners.
For Absen’s newest experience center, which opened in March in New York, partnerships are front and center with a focus on both high-drama imagery and interoperability. The 2,694-squarefoot facility provides hands-on product demonstrations, technical training, and industry collaboration opportunities.
The experience center showcases Absen’s most advanced direct-view LED solutions with in-depth looks at a wide range of Absen LED series options, including high-resolution 0.9 and 1.2mm pixel pitch, an all-in-one interactive LED, curved LED solutions, ultra-fine visualization options, an array of digital signage options, and options for rental and staging.
Alongside are a wealth of partners, including Yealink, TSI Touch, Rocket Alumni Solutions touch, Haivision Command 360 for operation and command centers, B-Tech AV mounts, tvONE’s CALICO PRO, and Green Hippo’s Hippotizer Media Servers, as well as showcased applications of Brompton Technology’s Tessera S8 LED video processor. These strategic partnerships will enhance the visitor experience by demonstrating real-world applications of integrated LED display solutions.
The center will support live product demonstrations, technical training sessions, and industry networking events that immerse people in the dvLED ecosystem.
While a highly visible show of technology can tell an AV company’s story, sometimes a showroom serves to emphasize the invisible role of technology, demonstrating how experiences can be created in unseen ways.
When L-Acoustics opened their Experience Center in Highgate, London, they initially went for a dazzling show of technical force in the historical building. “L-Acoustics purchased the building 10 years ago,” says Nick Fichte, business development director, home & yacht, global for L-Acoustics. “It was an old Royal Mail Postal Service sorting office that was used as a local depot for sending mail and parcels and whatnot. It was later converted into an architect’s practice and so on until we took it on.
“For us, it originally started life as a research and development facility for our L-ISA immersive audio technology, but the space was more targeted in its look and feel toward our pro audio customers. The speakers and subwoofers were on show. It was all integrated, and there was nice artwork and furniture, but there were still 18 speakers and 36 subwoofers in a room that had blue neon lights on them when you walked in. What we found is that, when you took architects, interior designers, or end users into that space, they felt overwhelmed and panicked about, ‘Where am I going to hide all these speakers and subwoofers?’”
When the design process for the re-imagined space was started, it was led heavily by L-Acoustics Founder and President Christian Heil, who partnered with French interior designer Lyne B and the U.K.-based design and interior fit-out company Cinema Luxe, which specializes in cinema rooms and recording studios.
The renovated space has resulted in a HYRISS (HyperReal Immersive Sound Space), which is a collection of L-Acoustics offerings — from design, loudspeakers, subwoofers, amplification, processing and software — that make a single, flexible solution that can handle a high-end 2-channel listening environment to a full immersive experience, and everything in between.
The large, moody, rectangular space has couches assembled around a television at one end and tables and chairs at the other. There are 16 Soka ultra-shallow in-wall loudspeakers throughout the room. The media area features a 98-inch Samsung television with an L-Acoustics X8i coaxial point-source speaker below it, which acts as a center channel. The low end is handled by 34 SB10 subwoofers, while 6-inch X6i coaxial point speakers provide the height channels.
“It’s like a grid,” says Fichte. “You have constant sound coverage wherever you are in that space because you’re never far away from a loudspeaker, which means that you never feel as if you’re in a dark spot. The L-ISA Processor also allows us to change the orientation of the content to any position within the room, so when we are watching a movie on the big screen we want to hear that Dolby Atmos soundtrack just as the director intended it, maybe when we are listening to Atmos Music from the Apple TV without the screen we want to be seated in a different part of the room; a simple UI on an iPad means we can move sound, whether it be mono, stereo, or Atmos, to any part of the space.
“That’s something that we’re really trying to get across to people — like lighting design for a space, they need to make sure there are no dark spots with the audio. Especially with the systems integrators, they’re used to talking to their clients for years about having different scenes for different times of day and how they want to use that space. This is exactly the same thing, but you’re doing it with sound. So, you can paint your room with sound and light, and you can integrate the two systems. When you recall that scene for your lighting, you’re also recalling the same scene for sound.”
These are tough concepts to get across without people experiencing them, so everything is oriented to spark the imagination for spatial sound. “One of the main attributes of HYRISS is that it can take a traditional stereo track and then, using a technology called Anima, spatialize it,” Fichte explains. “And I use the word ‘spatialize’ and not ‘upmix’ because it’s using machine learning and AI to pick apart whatever is coming into it live and literally separating each element of that music. There’s no center of the room anymore — wherever you are in that room, you’re in the sweet spot. The whole room becomes a sweet spot.”
While the playback capabilities of the HYRISS system are impressive, it can also enhance a live performance in the space, which it did at the Highgate Experience Center’s grand opening with a pianist entertaining the guests.
“As well as Anima, HYRISS has another technology from L-Acoustics called Ambiance, which works using a grid of microphones in the ceiling,” says Fichte. “We have eight microphones in the ceiling that are connected to our P1 processors, which in turn are connected to the L-ISA Processor. By using a control system, you can recall different presets. With Ambiance technology, we can recall a preset called ‘Concert Hall,’ and the technology will amplify the natural acoustics of the room. It can change completely how that space behaves. We have different signature presets — Concert Hall, Theater, Cave, Cathedral — and every single one sounds slightly different, and it plays with your mind completely, making you feel instantly like you are somewhere else.”
Big Drama
One of the more outrageous showrooms in Europe, the ARLED Cinema space in Stockelsdorf, Germany doesn’t hold back. The Movie Core Room is a futuristic study in blue, integrating the largest infrasonic subwoofer in the world (ASCENDO) with the world’s first 8K 144 Hz LED screen with 92% REC.2020 and BARCO Nerthus. 
Additional products come from Christie, MAG Cinema, madVR Envy, Futurestone, ARLED PRO Series LED-Screen, and Vorwerk.
