The new Stella Hotel, located conveniently close to the Easterwood Airport,
accommodates visitors who want to enjoy their stay in comfort and attend events in
well-appointed spaces. To ensure quality sound in the ballroom and meeting rooms,
the hotel called on systems integrators Hairel Enterprises of Conroe, which specified a
system based on a Symetrix Radius 12×8 EX DSP.
“The Stella Hotel is one of the nicest hotels I’ve worked on in years,” relates Hairel
Enterprises vice president Rob Slaughter. “It features 20,000 square feet of meeting
and event space, including the three-section Aurora Ballroom and four outboard
meeting spaces. The background music system is extensive and uses a lot more 70-
volt speaker zones than you would expect. Music is routed to zones in various
combinations, and zones often are combined, depending on what’s going on. Symetrix
DSPs are the first processor we reach for, especially for hotels, and the Radius 12×8
EX easily handled everything for the Stella Hotel project.”
Slaughter cites multiple reasons for choosing Symetrix, starting with reliability. “We’ve
used a lot of Symetrix processors, going back many years,” Slaughter recounts.
“Sure, once in awhile a unit will fail due to a lightning strike or a Coca-Cola spill, but
Symetrix DSPs are among the most stable products across the board-not just in DSP
land but in product land in general. Their mean time between failures, or MTBF, is very
low.”
Another factor is ease of use. “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to program it,”
insists Slaughter. “You can do a lot with Symetrix’ Composer software, and it doesn’t
fight you. The GUI is very friendly. Some of our people regularly go to Symetrix
training classes, too, so we know how to get the results we need. Also, Symetrix
processors integrate easily with the Crestron control systems we used in the Stella
Hotel.”
Symetrix Radius 12×8 EX processors are equipped with 128 (64×64) redundant
Dante™ channels for audio networking over IP. The Radius 12×8 EX offers 12
analogue inputs and eight analogue outputs, and the I/O is expandable via an
expansion card slot. The Radius 12×8 EX in the Stella Hotel system includes Symetrix
xIn 12 and xOut 12 expanders, which add a dozen analogue mic/line inputs and
outputs. Slaughter’s team also specified a Symetrix xControl External Control
Expander, which provided eight flexible analogue control inputs; 16 logic outputs for
driving LEDs, trigger relays or control contact closure ports; and 2 RS-232 ports.
“The Radius’ audio quality, compatibility, reliability, and ease of programming were
major factors,” Slaughter recounts, “but there’s another reason we chose Symetrix:
We have a great relationship with the Symetrix rep. We buy based on relationships
because we know we’ll get great support. I’ve had times I needed a DSP the same
morning, and the Symetrix rep found one for me.”
Of course, for the customer, it’s about reliable, high-quality performance. “We have
the utmost confidence in the Radius DSP in the Stella Hotel system,” concludes
Slaughter. “Symetrix processors just plain work.”
