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Bayside Marketplace: Rain or Shine from North to South

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As most Floridians are keenly aware, weather in the southeastern United States can be quite severe. Miami is plagued by heavy rainfall, high humidity, gale-force winds, and the occasional hurricane! These conditions aren’t necessarily electronics-friendly, to say the least. After several years of silence and echoes from nearby shops and bars, the property management team at the Bayside Marketplace in Miami, Florida decided it was time for a cohesive sound system to bring the whole venue together as one unified location. They reached out to Eric Manev of Professionally Installed Electronix (PIElectronix) in Pompano Beach for a solution.

Bayside Marketplace + SoundTube

Beautifully surrounded by ocean views and salty-sweet ocean air, this stunning marina and shopping corridor is well-known for its appearances in Miami Vice – a popular TV crime show in the 1980s. While the visuals are beyond pleasing, the auditory sensation for this venue had been lacking for quite some time. The management team had put off audio integration because the project appeared extremely complex geographically.

Geographical Hurdles

The collective Bayside Marketplace is made up of three separate, but joined, segments that form a large outdoor shopping and entertainment center. The North End houses the important parking garage as well as two full levels of retail outlets and restaurants. El Mercado (Spanish for the market) is an open, outdoor space situated between both the northern and southern ends. El Mercado is a large space with a stage for a live band to play music. At The South End, there are more indoor shops and restaurants overlooking Bayfront Park. Simply put, it would be difficult to join all three areas together with a uniform, linked system due to El Mercado in the center – it lacked grid support and only had access to wired internet. Traditional speaker wiring systems were an impossible fit for Bayside Marketplace, and they had put off the job for long enough.

Weather Hurdles

While a great portion of the Bayside Marketplace was indoors, it made little sense to add one cohesive sound system that could not link The North End with The South End. Also, it seemed impossible to conceive of a speaker that could withstand the harsh Florida weather. These speakers and wiring jobs needed to be water-tight, sea salt-proof, and installed securely enough to withstand hurricane-force wind.pasted-image.tiff

List of Needs

For this client, several things needed to be accomplished by PIElectronix for a single sound system to fit Bayside Marketplace’s needs. First, the entire system needed to be operable from the main control room to control all three portions of the marketplace. The second requirement was that wiring not be visible to customers. This was a challenging task due to all walls being entirely concrete; El Mercado is an open frame made of steel beams. Finally, the client wished to have the potential for emergency paging services – which would be impossible if the three portions of the marketplace were not tied together to a central hub.

SoundTube Installation

After an introduction to MSE Audio through their local sales representative, Manev had finally found a solution to the unique needs of the venue. During the design phase of this project, it was apparent that Soundtube’s Weather Extreme 70V speakers were the right fit for the job. Two different types of speakers were used – SM500i-II-WX speakers for the lower areas where less coverage was needed, and SM890i-WX speakers were used for larger coverage applications.

Choosing SoundTube

One of the main reasons the client decided to go with the SoundTube WX line was that each speaker is highly weather-resistant and logo-free. Speakers should be heard, not noticed – the mark of a good sound system is that you forget it’s even there. With SoundTube’s high-end quality design and performance, those boxes were certainly checked for the Bayside Marketplace.

Design Hurdles

Speaker placement was a difficult task in the design stage; audio experts had to distribute speakers such that full coverage was achieved, all while choosing spaces that could be decently anchored. For example, it was difficult to mount speakers into concrete, due to the wiring requirements, but it was of the utmost importance to the client that the wires were not visible to customers. In addition to this, some wiring had to be run through businesses that were not open at all hours; the goal was to create a seamless system from the customer-facing side.

Product Usage

For the Bayside Marketplace project, the following products were installed:
42 SoundTube Entertainment SM500i-II-WX 20 SoundTube Entertainment SM890i-WX 2 Ashly nXe4004 1 Ashly nXe8004 1 Ashly ne8250.70 Symetrix Prism 4×4 1 MIER BW-Rack Ace, 1 RTI XP3 Central Control Processor This product spread allowed full coverage of the venue while maintaining congruity in design and unanimous function through a central hub. The central hub was licensed for the iPad and worked perfectly for the client’s application.

Revisiting Bayside Marketplace

Since the SoundTube installation began in mid-December 2017, the client has been extremely pleased. During the first phase of installation for the venue, an item was on backorder. To complete phase one on time, by December 31, 2017 changes were made to existing in-stock products to make them similar in weather performance to the WX speaker line. MSE Audio was able to perform these upgrades within the necessary time period, and none of the system’s components have required a service call in the year and a half they’ve been in use. For the Bayside Marketplace case study, it was apparent that the WX speakers were the perfect fit for the needs of the venue. Withstanding heavy rainfall, salty sea air, and strong winds regularly, the speakers that fill El Mercado and its surrounding shops have been a perfect addition to Bayside Marketplace. According to Bayside Marketplace, “It is now 2020; the system still looks and sounds great and has not required a single service call.” About MSE Audio Headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, USA, MSE Audio is the parent company of six speaker manufacturing brands and distributes its products globally. With multiple design and manufacturing centers across the residential and commercial markets, MSE Audio’s synergistic, cross-platform design and engineering ensures exceptional durability, superior sonic performance and refined aesthetics. www.mseaudio.com About PIElectronix Based in South Florida, PIElectronix is a full-service audiovisual firm offering comprehensive AV design, installation, and post installation services within the areas of AV conferencing, design build, digital signage, commercial projectors, and video walls. www.pielectronix.com Media Contact: Coleen Sterns Leith Marketing Matters P: 954-925-1511 x1 E: [email protected]

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