Brisbane Powerhouse
Overview
As Brisbane City Council’s premier arts venue, Brisbane Powerhouse is a hub for creativity, art and cultural innovation featuring plays, concerts and other shows. Brisbane Powerhouse wanted to undertake a major infrastructure upgrade in their key performance space, the 520 seat Powerhouse Theatre.
Background
For over 20 years, Brisbane Powerhouse has showcased more than 1250 performances a year including a program of festivals, events, functions, weddings and conferences.
As one of the busiest art venues in the Asia-Pacific region, offering a year-round program that features music, comedy, dance, film, visual arts, cabaret, circus and theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse needed a reliable provider of high-quality audio visual services to help them upgrade their performance space within an appropriate time frame.
The Challenge
As Brisbane’s premier arts venue, it was important that infrastructure upgrades took place in a timely fashion and didn’t infringe upon any of the scheduled performances.
As a heritage listed venue, there were significant cabling and structure limitations that ultimately required the rack to be located within the theatre itself. This posed a number of issues, as loud amplifiers and fans would be audible to patrons.
Our Solution
Energising a performance space with sensible solutions.
Our team designed and installed a custom engineered equipment rack, as well as the necessary cabling infrastructure, steel enclosures, connection plates and panels.
Due to the cabling and structure limitations, a custom-built enclosure was installed within the theatre to significantly reduce and contain the noise of cooling and amplifier fans. Concurrently, our team devised a convection cooling system to maintain optimal temperatures for the rack and associated equipment.
Our technicians integrated the amplifier’s Dante capability into a pre-configured network switch, ready for additional patching and system inputs. Positioning all the interconnects at the front of the rack created simplified patching for users.
To integrate the new Martin Audio CDD6 Delay Speakers, existing Martin Audio DD6 front fill speakers and DiGiCo FOH console patching, we installed the required cabling and terminations as well as designed and manufactured custom steel enclosures and plates. These plates provide clear identification for technical staff to connect and disconnect equipment, which is essential for the ever-changing needs of such a dynamic venue.
Finally, anticipating the short time frame for the PA change over, we pre-built the equipment rack in our workshop and prefabricated all cable looms, custom plates and patch cabling. This ensured on-site changeover was lightning fast, seamless and didn’t interfere with any program scheduling.
“Ampd’s meticulous execution and project management delivered us results that far exceeded our expectations.“
Mark James
Head of Audio Visual
The Results
Through careful design and planning, our turnkey solution has provided the Brisbane Powerhouse with a premium outcome to address both the cooling and noise of amplifiers along with the future-proof infrastructure that allows for efficient and cost-effective upgrades for many years to come.
Any inquiries regarding custom rack building and design work to metal fabrication, custom plates and infrastructure, as well as any of the services and solutions mentioned above, please contact our sales team sales@ampdelectronics.com.au | 07 3311 6049.
