Allen & Heath's iDR Offers Bulletproof Reliability at Camp Pendleton
San Diego, CA (June 6, 2005) -- Nowhere is the reliability of Allen & Heath's iDR programmable DSP distributed audio system more critical than at Camp Pendleton, near San Diego, California, where Bluewater Audio has installed a system to control communications at one of the firing ranges. An iDR-4 is at the heart of a PA system that allows range officers to communicate both with Marines on the firing line and those working with the targets at the 214 Range, part of the Edson Range at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot.
 "The range, which is used at least 12 hours a day, every single day, has five firing lines 100 yards apart," explains Paul Svenson, co-owner of Bluewater Audio, a San Diego-based design and installation company specializing in military, church and school projects (www.bluewateraudio.com). "We put sound systems on three of them. All of the controls run through the Allen & Heath iDR-4 and a PL-3 remote control wall panel. We programmed the PL-3 to allow them to turn the speakers on and off on any of those three lines."
The system had to be failsafe and intelligible, according to Bluewater Audio co-owner Steven Manno. "It's very much a life and death situation. We needed a system that would be coherent for the people on the line so they would know when to start shooting and when to stop. The challenge with this was the ambient noise from wind, plus people shooting rifles, and people wearing hearing protectors. The feature set of the iDR4 software allowed us to fine-tune the system without having to add peripheral components."
Having installed Allen & Heath's iDR-4 in a similarly critical environment at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar late last year, Svenson shares that he had no doubts that it would meet the firing range's requirement for total reliability. "We had done other rifle ranges, including one twice this size at Camp Pendleton, and used a digital mixer that is still hanging in there, but we put it in crossing our fingers. This time, we didn't cross our fingers -- we knew the iDR-4 was going to work just fine."
Bluewater Audio mounted Community R2 loudspeakers on 26-foot telephone poles midway between one each of the three firing lines. "The range officer stands in a tower with his wireless radio, which goes into a wireless receiver back in the rack, so he can talk to the line or the people in the pit or both, just by selecting a different frequency on the radio," says Svenson.
Six Community R.5 speakers are located in the pit. Five QSC amplifiers drive into 70-volt lines tapped at 400 watts at each of the speakers on the range and in the pit.
"We put in emergency UPS back-ups and all kind of redundancy in case anything does go down," Svenson reports, "including some custom patch panels, in case there is a problem with the amps. These are all located in the pit in a concrete building they call the 'sound shack.'"
Bluewater Audio will most likely be installing another Allen & Heath system at another firing range later this year. "We just turned in a proposal for the Marine base at 29 Palms," says Svenson. "That'll have an iDR as well."
More than 40,000 active-duty and 26,000 reserve military personnel from all services use the many ranges and training facilities each year at Camp Pendleton, which was established in the mid-1940s. Encompassing more than 125,000 acres of varied terrain and 17.1 miles of shoreline, Camp Pendleton offers a wide array of training opportunities, including the Edson Range, where Marine recruits receive four weeks of field and rifle training at boot camp.
For further information on the entire range of Allen & Heath iDR DSP products please visit www.idrseries.com.
Established for 35 years, Allen & Heath designs and manufactures professional audio mixing consoles for an international clientele in the live sound, installed systems and nightclub markets. Established in 2002, Allen & Heath USA has been set up by American Music & Sound (AM&S) to provide U.S. distribution for the British audio mixing products manufacturer. |
