SynAudCon’s ECS: Design and Deployment Seminar

by Brenda Brown

Highlights from the ECS: Design and Deployment seminar.

SynAudCon was in Washington DC last week presenting our ECS: Design and Deployment Seminar.  It was neat being in a historical city during an historical election.  Those who attended the seminar are now aware of historical changes within our industry.

For 43 years, SynAudCon has been offering one-time events as new technologies develop so we can get our attendees up-to-speed quickly.  Of all the one-time special events offered in the last 43 years, this event presented the greatest opportunity for sound system practitioners.

Wayne Moore, Larry Rietz and Bill Nattress presented the new code changes – where it is going and ways to work with the Authority Having Jurisdiction, or AHJ. They presented cases where pro audio systems are now being used for ECS announcements.  Their passion to save more lives through use of the house sound system was clear in their presentations.

For two days, Pat Brown presented ways to design an intelligible speech system in live, reverberant and noisy spaces.  He drove home the points with a site visit to the historic St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.  Sander van Wijngaarden helped us understand the process behind measuring speech intelligibility, with hands-on exercises at the site using STIPA meters.

It took 4 days to cover the information properly, but this group of attendees gained insights that will be extremely beneficial to their companies.

The room was filled with AV practitioners/engineers with an average of over 25 years of experience.  A good percentage had over 35 years. Combining knowledge with years of experience brings wisdom. Presenting this information to this group is sure to ignite some new products and business opportunities that will come back in revenue. More importantly, the sound reinforcement industry is now part of the equation for saving lives through emergency announcements. There are collaboration opportunities with the fire alarm industry. An important take-away from the event is that sound reinforcement systems and IP networks will be major players in mass notification systems. Many of the seminar’s attendees were forming alliances and scheduling meetings before the event even ended. The future is bright for the proactive.

Our deepest gratitude to the presenters for their willingness to share this information with the attendees.

Enjoy viewing some photos taken at the event.