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Tiger Tales Told via Marantz PMD570
A national home dedicated to children’s literature had long been the dream of Elizabeth Hamill and Mary Briggs, whose vision was to place children, young people and their books at the core of the UK’s national literary culture. Their wish was realised late last year when the multi-galleried Seven Stories opened in a Grade II listed Victorian flour mill in the riverside Regeneration and Conservation area of the Ouseburn Valley in Newcastle. The building was restored throughout 2005 at a cost of £6.5 million.
Chief executive of Seven Stories, Mary Briggs commented: “Children’s literature has a vital role to play in supporting every child’s development, intellectually, artistically and emotionally.
“A key element of the brief to Tiger AV was to implement an innovative AV system which was both sympathetic to the aesthetics of this listed, historic building, whilst providing a robust installation which could withstand ongoing and unsupervised activity. The majority of the original fabric of the building has been maintained, which provided a big challenge for the AV design. Main factors to work around included very low ceiling beams, as well as some internal walls which were only four feet high.”
Tony Crossley, technical director at Tiger AV, said: “The Centre thrives on being able to offer exhibitions and visuals that make the original manuscripts come alive and AV was fundamental in making this happen.”
The Centre is literally spread across seven storeys, but one of the most interactive areas is the ‘The Engine Room’, located on the first floor, which takes exhibition themes and invites visitors (of all ages) to explore their own creativity through play and hands-on exploration. Here visitors can record the creative process involved in making a children’s book, via ‘story pods’ which were purpose-designed for the Centre by Tiger AV.
And this is where the Marantz Professional PMD570 comes into its own. “The Education Officer wanted to have the ability to create an archive of the children telling their own stories, and we pondered how we could implement this,” explained Tony.
“Recording onto a compact flash card is easy — but we had to think about the mechanics of how it could operate in an unsupervised way.”
Tiger AV’s solution was to create a simple traffic-light scenario. Depressing the light that is flashing activates a voice-over, presenting audio information to the children via headphones, and instructing them to press a button to commence recording onto the 1Gb CF card in the PMD570. Various failsafes are built in and there is the option to re-record and play their story back via a listening booth.
Sensing that the PMD570 would deliver broadcast-quality audio Tiger AV have used high-quality boundary mics and preamps to preserve the signal. “We set up a PC with card reader and software, and at the end of every day the CF card is removed, the data archived onto a hard disk and the blank card re-inserted.”
The technical director opted for the Marantz device principally “because it would do the job, because we have always had a great relationship with parent company D&M Professional, and because we trusted its reliability.”
Another reason for preferring the PMD570 was because of its RS-232 compatibility. “It had to be RS-232 controllable to interface with the AMX AV system controller, which we programmed in-house.”
Finally, he says, the PMD570’s instant playback facility was also essential. “It was important that once they had finished recording, the children could play it back immediately — and both record and playback are instant with this machine.”
It was also vital that unauthorised access was denied, and so the integrators created a bespoke cabinet, with a locking door to house the equipment rack.
This rack contains a selection of Denon amplifiers (from D&M Professional) which drive the system. “We also used the instant start Denon DN-C635 CD player for the voice-over in the story-pod — the transport is excellent and it’s virtually bombproof.”
Concluded Mary Briggs: “It’s been a fantastic journey with amazing people on board. Today, the dream can be shared with everyone and the excitement and joy of children’s books is available here and now for the first time in the region and the country.”
13th April 2006
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