Mahajak details the work that went into providing the Avani Riverside Bangkok hotel with the requisite AV systems.
The Avani Riverside Bangkok hotel is a property owned by the Chao Phaya Resort in the Thonburi area of Bangkok, Thailand. The brand new hotel was established and opened to the public towards the tail end of the last year after work had commenced in May 2015.
As any modern hotel, the Avani Riverside Bangkok has been fitted with a range of AV systems to help the multi-function spaces at the property serve patrons and customers. The AV systems for the hotel were designed by Eric Wong from Ketakan Consulting while Mahajak served as the system integrator.
Apisit Kruachaem, project sales engineer at Mahajak, says: “The customer needed equipment for multi-purpose spaces used for events such as wedding ceremonies, seminars and other gatherings. Actually, their expectations were for a high quality integrated system with high reliability and good support. These are extremely high standards and we tried our best to meet them for the project. We worked diligently to meet the design brief from the consultant in the most cost-effective way.”
The Avani Riverside Bangkok hotel is a large building and Mahajak was responsible for providing the audio system and digital signage for the main lobby along with AV systems for a number of meeting rooms, ballrooms and hotel lounges and restaurants.
As is normal, most attention was given to the AV systems deployed in the main ballroom. The Grand Riverside ballroom, located on the 10th floor of the hotel, is spacious enough to seat 900 guests for banquets. The ballroom also boasts an adjacent pre-function area which is meant for smaller events such as cocktail receptions.
The pre-function room features 12 JBL C328CT 8-in ceiling speakers which come with MTC-300BB8 backboxes. In a similar vein, audio in the grand ballroom is provided by 12 JBL C322C 12-in ceiling speakers with MTC- 300BB12 backboxes.
Visuals in the ballroom are handled by three Panasonic PT-DW17K projectors which deliver 17,000 lumens brightness. Kruachaem explains: “The Grand Riverside ballroom can be split and converted into four separated rooms; named Lunar, Moon and Galaxy. Each of these rooms accommodates 240 guests for banquet. Moreover, the Galaxy room can be further split into two smaller rooms namely the Galaxy 1 and Galaxy 2 with a banquet capacity of 120 guests. With the three projectors we can provide visuals for this variety of configurations.”
Digital signage at the grand ballroom and the pre-function area is provided by six LG 23MP65HQ-P panels along with six AMX IS-SPX-1300 signage players. The displays and players are managed by a Linksys EA6900-AP wireless router. Five meeting rooms can also be found on the 10th floor.
These meeting rooms differ in size and function and have been equipped with AV systems keeping these differences in mind. Samsung UA65H7000AK display and Panasonic EW60 projectors are used as displays.
Audio is provided in the meeting rooms by a range of JBL speakers which include the C226C/T, C16C/T, C14C/T and CSS-8004 models. The control room for the AV systems found in the Grand Riverside ballroom and the meeting rooms is located on the 11th floor. The core of the video system is based around an AMX Enova DGX 16 switcher. This helps connect video inputs and outputs.
On the audio side a BSS BLU-100 DSP is the heart of the audio system. Audio is managed by this product along with the requisite break-out boxes. Four Crown CTs8200A amplifiers provide power for the speakers in the meeting rooms while six Crown XLi2500 amplifiers and six Crown Xli3500 amplifiers are used for the ballroom.
An AMX NX-3200 controller unit is also provided for the five meeting rooms collectively and the ballroom.
As with any build project, Mahajak faced many challenges during their work on the Avani Riverside Bangkok hotel. Kruachaem details: “The system installation was delayed due to the other contractors being late and this required extensive effort on our part to try and complete the project on time to meet the client’s opening dates.”
He adds: “The large recessed projection screens in the ballroom required some ingenuity to install and we had to employ some creative engineering and design. Also, plans for BOH changed during the course of the project and this necessitated extensive redesign and rewiring during installation.”
Looking back on the project, Kruachaem says: “There are not many changes that we would like to make but, as with any project, looking back in hindsight we would probably make some different choices with regards to the products selected.”