by Nevil Bounds, Biamp, UK.
Biamp® is a leading provider of innovative, networked media solutions that connects people through extraordinary audio-visual experiences.
Once again, we are delighted to be a sponsor of the Media & Learning Conference in 2023. For over 45 years, we’ve developed professional AV solutions that enable great communication for spaces ranging from small rooms to large public venues. Our company is recognised worldwide for delivering high quality products and backing them with a commitment to exceptional customer service.
Biamp products are often used in Higher Education for professional audio and video applications; in many cases we are one of the preferred solutions and this means that we get to see a lot of the issues that are faced by many Campuses.
One of the most important aspects of any audio-visual system is the initial design and concept with regard to the operation and support of the products that are used. From an AV Manager’s viewpoint, they require easy to deploy systems that are reliable and require minimum levels of support; from the user’s perspective, they just want systems that are straight forward to use without high levels of complexity.
What are the challenges?
With the desire to have more spaces able to accommodate hybrid learning, many classroom environments have had addition work carried out on them that is over and above a normal refresh cycle. Additionally, many campuses do not get much notice of what funding is going to be allocated to these projects and this can result in rushed designs for systems where the outcome is not entirely optimal.
Procurement lead times with some vendors have been a major problem over the last 2-3 years due to supply chain and component availability problems. Not knowing what products are going to be available has resulted in AV systems integrators and campus AV teams having to carry out multiple iterations of design to suit what products they can obtain, even if these could be not a perfect solution in some cases. In other words, designing audio-visual systems for even the most straight forward applications has become expensive and time-consuming.
Classroom Designer
By looking at what challenges are being faced by the teams, Biamp has taken a long hard look at ways to assist the process and to be able to provide easily deployable systems that are repeatable.
The free to use Classroom Designer software has revolutionised the way that audio-visual systems can be designed and optimised for teaching and learning spaces.
By inputting just a few parameters of the room such as: dimensions, number of seats, number of desks and approximate quality of the room acoustics, Classroom Designer is able to provide a fully specified Biamp solution for the audio portion of the system. As part of this output, you are provided with a bill of materials along with suggestions for optional features and connectivity.
Biamp Launch
Biamp Launch technology triggers automatic discovery, configuration, and tuning of connected Biamp devices without the need for custom programming. In addition, Launch provides the user with a full performance report for the teaching and learning space upon completion. This is a major time-saver for calibrating and commissioning of audio-visual systems.
Auto-configuration may be initiated from the Launch button on the Audio page of the embedded user interface or from the Launch button on the front of the device itself.
This concept will be demonstrated by Nevil Bounds and Hans Timmermans of Biamp during our workshop session at Media & Learning 2023.
Author
Nevil Bounds, Business Development Manager Biamp Europe, Biamp, UK.
