Signature Boston Blog
New Digital PA System at Boston Convention & Exhibition Center

Last fall, a brand new, crystal-clear, PA system was installed at the BCEC. This new system will deliver audio to thousands of attendees, and can service multiple concurrent events.

The selection of a new PA system was no easy task. Several months prior to installation, Tom Streit, Audiovisual Systems Manager for the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority (MCCA), and his team had selected the vendor who provided the best, and simplest, solution. Sudbury, Mass.-based integrator Adtech Systems was chosen to install the Harman BSS/Crown system prior to the busy show season at the BCEC. The system upgrade included a dedicated redundant network with a 10 GB backbone operating completely independent from the enterprise and show networks. Dante was chosen as the networking technology to deliver digital audio to the ballrooms, exhibit halls, and 80 plus meeting rooms.

“With this new system in place, the building operates simply,” said Streit in an article published in Commercial Integrator this spring. “We can send audio from any input to any output.”

Communications Design Associates (CDA) of Canton, Mass., alongside the MCCA, led the team to design the system and select a manufacturer from eight qualified contenders. The system includes 47 Dante-enabled Harman BSS Blue 806 digital signal processors, and 200 channels of Crown DCI amplification, allowing the BCEC to have high-quality audio in places that weren’t easily reached before.

The 6,114-channel Dante network routes room audio, paging, and background music from any of the 500 plus inputs in the building to any of the 200 plus outputs (speaker zones).

Another benefit of the new system is the minimization of long-term costs for potential future expansion of the network. Expansion possibilities include nearby hotels and other close venues. In the short-term, the next definite project on the horizon for the BCEC is the improvement of the building-wide speaker system.

Learn more about the BCEC’s audiovisual capabilities on our website.