Hurrairah bin Sohail visits the Pure Fitness gym where a carefully calibrated projection system helps provide members with an extra dose of immersion while they exercise.
Pure Fitness at Ngee Ann City is a
gym located in the bustling heart
of Orchard Road, Singapore.
The premises the gym now occupies previously served as a
nightclub. A signiï¬cant remodelling project was
undertaken to have the space serve the needs of
its latest occupant.
AV Land was brought in as the AV integrator
for the project. Alvin Chong, business manager
for AV Land, says: “We were engaged directly by
the owner for the speciï¬ c room in question. The
project was almost like a design and build. Our
past track record and experience with extensive,
non-traditional projection project made AV
Land a great ï¬t for the job.”
The brief from the client was simple. Pure
Fitness required a curved, custom display and
audio systems for a dedicated cycling room, popularly know as ‘spinning’ in gym parlance. The
most important consideration for the AV system
deployed was quality performance while also
being easy to use for the trainers and instructors.
For visuals AV Land deployed four Panasonic
PT-RZ660 WUXGA projectors. Chong says:
“With a curved display surface, projection with
blended edges was the only way to go to provide
a seamless viewing experience.”
He continues: “Laser projection was a key
requirement as well. They are lamp-free and require little to no maintenance. This means that interaction with the projector is kept to a minimum which means we don’t have to align
and realign the projectors all the time.”
The content is stored on a Mac Pro which
outputs over four projectors. The projector’s inbuilt blending feature forms a seamless single
image on the 25m by 3m wall. An Extron switcher
and Aten splitter is employed to split the video
out which is carried over to four projectors.
Interestingly, video signals to the projectors
are transmitted over DVI. Chong justiï¬ es the
selection: “We employed some of our hard
earned expertise gathered over the years for the
video transmission. The distance between the AV
rack and the projectors is short so we were able
to have a direct cable run and, from experience,
DVI generally has slightly less latency when
compared with the latency of HDBaseT. So we
decided to not overcomplicate matters and go
with DVI. We also chose Optis optical cables to
safeguard against failure.”
With the projection being a core
component of the project, AV Land spent time ensuring that the visuals were perfect.
Chong narrates: “Projector alignment was
the most challenging aspect of this project. As it is a non-uniform, curved wall, auto
camera setup and alignment wasn’t deployed.
To meet the high expectations of the client,
we decided to go for manual alignment and
blending of the projectors even though it is
a difficult and time consuming process. But we were able to achieve a perfect blending of
the image. We generated custom test patterns with circles, lines and squares to check for
any misalignment or incorrect video format. A final test was conducted by a close up
inspection of video alignment and laser; and
for checking of correct video format on this
unique curved wall.”
The curved screen for projection has been
painted with Goo paint. Chong says: “We chose
Screen Goo Basic White because their white
coatings work best in darkness. With its gain
of 1.05, it brings out the colours superbly in
the dark. It is non-intrusive, maintenance-free
and sits well with the gym’s
aesthetic.”
Content for the room at
Pure Fitness is provided by Les
Mills which runs on the Mac and has cyclists pedalling their
way through digitally inspired cityscapes and country roads.
Audio in the space is provided by eight JBL PRX
series speakers. Two speakers
can be found at the front, two at the back and one each at the sides of the room. Two sub-woofers are also
employed for handling the lower frequencies.
Chong says: “Background music at the gym
is provided by different Bose speakers. But the
client wanted a different sound for this room
and wanted a lot of power, but economically.
We provided two sub-woofers because this, after
all, is a dedicated exercise space. More bass and
more impact in these cases is always good.
“The JBL speakers were specifically chosen
because they are self-powered. This allowed us
to do away with amplifiers and actually saved us
a lot of rack space.”
A Yamaha MTX series audio DSP was deployed
for multi-zone audio control. It is equipped with
flexible processing functions, that were essential
for audio tuning. AKG 470 series headset
microphones are also provided for trainers and
instructors to use during their sessions.
Ease of operation was also a requirement. AV
Land has configured an intuitive control system
for Pure Fitness which can be controlled through
an app on an iPad.
Chong explains: “We don’t need a traditional
control processor for such a small space and
there is no controller to be found in the rack.
We decided to go down the route of control via
software. The control app has been configured
on the iPad for the client to use.”
Ease of operation was also a requirement. AV
Land has configured an intuitive control system
for Pure Fitness which can be controlled through
an app on an iPad. As technologies evolve,
the iPad touch panel was chosen as the brain
for the control of all various equipment such
as projectors, audio DSP and Mac Pro via IP,
whereas a traditional system requires a central
control system which would have incurred
additional cost.
Looking back, Chong says: “This project
stands out because for once we had ample time
to complete and deliver. In fact, we had the
other contractors crunched for time for us. We
needed the air-conditioning in the room to be
functional before we began the alignment for
the projector, because changes in temperature
can expand and contract the equipment. So
HVAC had to make sure that the air-conditioning
for the space was up and running by the time
our work started.”