Systems grow with the convention market in Boston

Faced with serving its own diverse and growing client base, the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority (MCCA) responded by completing the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center (BCEC) this past June. Designed by Rafael Vinoly Architects of New York City, the sprawling glass-and-steel structure dominates its environs, effectively serving as an architectural bridge between the large-scale, mixed-use buildings of the South Boston Waterfront Redevelopment Project to the north and small-scale residential buildings to the south. With a splendid view of Boston Harbor, 516,000 square feet of contiguous exhibit space under its curving roof, 82 meeting rooms, and a 40,020 square-foot grand ballroom, the BCEC is the largest facility of its kind in the region. Outfitted with state-of-the-art systems integration, the convention center offers easy and abundant access to Internet, data, and AV technologies, and even running water at individual booth sites in the exhibition hall.

Audio in the exhibit hall, as well as in the rest of the BCEC, was implemented by Northborough, MA-based Central Communications Systems Inc. Working as a vendor to Lan-Tel, the project's electrical contractor, Central Communications provided components outlined in a spec developed by New York's Shen Milsom Wilke. Taking a joint approach to the project, Central Communications and Lan-Tel crews divided tasks to make the job easier. Lan-Tel ran the conduit, hung loudspeakers, and pulled wire, while Central Communications built the racks in their shop, did the engineering and programming, and oversaw terminations, among other things.

“Features that used to be considered luxuries in an exhibit hall are standard equipment at the BCEC," says Central Communications Director of Operations Tom Streit, one of the guiding forces keeping the project on-track. "For starters, the whole building is linked with wireless Internet, access to which can be found along with traditional hard-wired Internet within floor boxes available across the exhibit hall. Life safety systems are tied-in to the house PA, and audio house-wide travels a fiber network. If any place is representative of a new order of convention centers built for the 21st century, this is certainly it."

Loudspeakers chosen for the project include iMount™ performance systems from Lowell, which were suspended in areas with lower ceiling heights in the hall, and deployed in far-reaching rows of two each north and south. 146 iMount speaker systems (model IM12P-TS32-3SB) were installed in total, each of which includes a 150W coaxial 12-inch compression driver operating at 70V using Lowell's 20/20 AudioVision™ transformer. The integrated systems feature rectangular backboxes with a volume of three cubic feet, providing a system response of 50 Hz-20 kHz (+/- 6 dB), dispersion rated at 65 degrees at 2000 Hz, and a sensitivity of 97 dB average at 1W/1m.

Designed to expedite quicker installations, the iMount speaker systems require little more of the installer beyond hanging the device, making the speaker connections, and moving on. Factory features facilitating such short work include 1/4" x 20 forged eyebolts for hanging, speaker connections that are externally accessible through a four-inch square flush cover plate, and a transformer tap selector conveniently located on the front subplate that is protected by the system's square grille, which is offered in black or white.  

"In a job of this size and scope, survival and profitability is a matter of time and staying on schedule," Streit relates. "The iMount systems not only met the sonic requirements of the task, but helped us in our continual race against the clock. If we had done this with traditional loudspeaker components, it probably would have doubled our labor.  But with the iMount components, everything we needed for that portion of the loudspeaker hang came complete right out-of-the-box. We simply suspended each enclosure from available gridwork within the ceiling, terminated the connections, and went on to the next one until there weren't any left to hang."

Without question the site of one of the biggest--if not the biggest--audio install in Massachusetts, the BCEC is New England's largest manmade enclosed space. Big enough to host 16 NFL games consecutively (kids, don't try this at home unless you live at the BCEC), the facility has transformed the convention and meetings industry in the Northeast, and made Boston a major player on the national convention circuit.