Optocore solves problems for Protec
Published: MEA
UAE: Optocore has proven to be a useful tool for the Dubai-headquartered event equipment rental house, Protec, when it comes to distributing audio for some of its more challenging projects. The most recent example of this came for an event at the Dubai Mall ice rink.
‘We couldn’t run cables the way we normally would and had to think outside the box to distribute the signal,’ recalled Protec’s audio engineer Dan Dignan. ‘The closest we could get the amps was 100m away to where the speakers were positioned which wasn’t an option. So we decided to fly them on top of the L-Acoustics K2 system that we had used for the show and run fibre. We used 2km of fibre to take care of the Optocore Sane units on top of the arrays and around the venue and also to look after the DiGiCo racks and desk.’
Having used the system for this show as well as a few other projects, Mr Dignan was quick to praise the networking solution. ‘Optocore provides nice little ways of getting out of problems. It’s flexible and easy to use. Most of the time you don’t need anything complicated, you just need to go point to point.’
Away from Optocore, the rental company has spent the summer months expanding its ever growing inventory. ‘We’ve just purchased a lot of L-Acoustics X Series equipment. We’ve got the X15s and X8s and have added more 5XTs and X12s to our existing stock. They sound and look good and weigh nothing. We’ve had the X8 and X12s out on jobs in recent months and they’ve been great,’ noted Mr Dignan. ‘Our DiGiCo S21s have also come in and we are enjoying using them. The new updates have improved things that they were missing when they first came out. It’s a nice desk to travel with and you’ve got everything there.
‘We are continuing with steady upgrades,’ he continued. ‘We’ve got a lot of kit anyway so we don’t need to make big equipment investments. It’s just improving the little bits here and there such as smaller sized corporate desks and smaller boxes like the X Series stuff.’