As the largest charity in the UK and the second largest medical research charity in the world, the Wellcome Trust is currently spending around £500 million each year to support biomedical research.
Reinforcing this position has been the recent opening of the Wellcome Collection, a £30 million visitor centre in London’s Euston Road which combines three exhibition galleries, the Wellcome Library, a conference centre, public events forum, club, café and bookshop.
Installed by Sarner Ltd, a specialist audio visual systems integrator, Ampetronic induction loops form a vital part of the project, being provided in the main circulation area, conference centre auditorium, forum and three seminar rooms.
With the close proximity of several loop systems, minimising crosstalk between each one was of the utmost priority, so Sarner invited Ampetronic to design low spill induction loops which would guarantee precision coverage of each one.
“We have a long relationship with Ampetronic and know that they can always rise to such a challenge,” says Sarner’s Shane Stanley. “Having no cross-talk or interference was the key to the design.”
“To get the best comprehensive coverage, Ampetronic’s technical support team was invited down to London to carry out a detailed site survey. Particular attention was taken with the raked Auditorium and avoiding the base plate of the seating. A copper wire was used instead of the conventional copper tape to allow for more strategic positioning, whilst still providing the best possible coverage. This was one of the main challenges with the project.” said Shane.
The Ampetronic design utilised double arrays to ensure that there is no cross-interference, with a pair of ILD500s provided in the auditorium and one each in Seminar Rooms 2 and 3, pairs of ILD122s in the forum and circulation area and a pair of ILD300s in Seminar Room 1.
All equipment was rack mounted locally using Ampetronic rack kits, with system feeds from A/V sources including DVD / VCR playback and local audio mixers. An AMX control system is installed in each space to make the systems very simple to use.
But with challenges overcome and the ultra-reliable Ampetronic equipment installed, both the Wellcome Trust and Sarner are very happy with the result.
“Ampetronic has done numerous projects with us in the past. We know the company, we trust them and so they’re the ones we go to,” says Shane. “They have the ability to take any brief we give them and come up with as near a perfect solution as possible. This not only makes for very accurate systems, but also unsurpassed reliability.”
