Seattle’s Leading Boutique Hotel Uses Symetrix’ SymNet
Dec 14, 2006 6:48 PM
Since opening in the summer of 2006, Hotel 1000 has fulfilled its focus in becoming Seattle’s finest luxury boutique hotel. Located in the heart of downtown Seattle, Hotel 1000 boasts 120 luxury hotel rooms on ten floors and 47 condominium residences on fourteen floors. It also includes a selection of restaurants and bars, a full-service spa and fitness center, a wine cellar for the residents, a dog-walking park on the roof, and over 6,000 square-feet of high-tech meeting and banquet space for business guests.
Design/build firm Pro-Comm and its division, The Music Room of Lynnwood, Wash., used their expertise in high-rise projects to provide their AV installation services for the 24-floor structure. The Music Room installed AV systems and automatic shades in all 120 rooms. Hotel 1000’s nine boardrooms and conference rooms also feature an AV distribution system installed by The Music Room using SymNet audio networking equipment. “We were referred to the product specifically by our AV designer, Stan Holt. We chose Symetrix because they are local, have good tech support, and were willing to help onsite with the system configuration,” says Bob Davis, field supervisor and co-owner of Pro-Comm/The Music Room.
Boardroom 406 in Hotel 1000 features the usual technology aspects of any meeting room such as a motorized screen and projector, installed loudspeakers, and a document camera. Users of the full-featured room quickly discover that Boardroom 406’s robust collaboration tools offer the latest in cutting-edge AV technology. One SymNet 8×8 DSP handles all audio signal routing for the room. As an added benefit, the room can pick up the hotel’s house music source with level control. The SymNet 8×8 DSP also works with the installed Crestron control system to give the user an individual level control for each of the six microphones at the boardroom table. Additionally, six VGA inputs are wired into the table for added flexibility.
SymNet also works in conjunction with the boardroom’s Tandberg videoconferencing system by applying its echo-canceling algorithm to improve voice quality. “This problem often exists when there is a microphone and a speaker,” says Davis. “If the audio is coming in via loudspeakers, there is an echo on the microphone because it’s picking up the audio. SymNet samples the frequency of the echo and cancels it out.”
According to Rick Strauss, sales and marketing manager and co-owner of Pro-Comm/The Music Room, the boardroom’s “show me” feature is also a popular collaboration tool. “This feature will allow up to six users to share their laptop data displays,” he explained. “Each position at the table includes a handheld switch that any of the attendees or the presenter can press to select when their laptop display is to be shared and viewed on the main screen.”
This show me feature is also available when the videoconferencing system is in use, meaning that conferencing participants not located at the hotel can also view multiple data displays in the same way.
Taking collaboration and sharing to another level, nearly any source device like a DVD player or computer is potentially available as an AV source device anywhere on the network of the nine boardrooms. The hotel’s background music system is available as a component on the AV network by using one SymNet 8×8 DSP box and one SymNet BreakOut12 box, located in the main equipment center. The Music Room’s design uses SymNet’s matrixing abilities to take audio sources and route them to public areas. “The BreakOut12 box gives the hotel more output zones and gives level control to other areas like the parking garage, spa and lobby,” Davis says. “We were new to the product and appreciated the support of Ryan Curtright from Symetrix for tech support and help with SymNet configuration.”
