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AUDIA at the High Court of Australia
The High Court
held its first sitting in Melbourne in 1903, in a setting that is vastly
different to the court After the highly successful upgrade of its Canberra courtrooms, a revamp of the Sydney High Court room in the city’s Law Court facility was ordered. The design required state of the art technology including multiple zones for speaker and microphones all with different EQ and processing and controlled from a central location, a complex task. The High Court turned to the consultants who had successfully designed the new systems in Canberra, Integrated Media and Acoustic Directions. With such a complex design, a system is required that can be operated without having the nation’s highest level audio professionals on hand. Design consultant, Glenn Leembruggen and project manager David Gilfillan determined that a networked, automated system was the only way to go, just as in Canberra.
Introduced just over a year ago, Audia is a complete Digital Audio Platform available in two models, AudiaSOLO and AudiaFLEX. Both share a common proprietary software, are set up via TCP/IP and both are drag and drop DSP-based units which can be configured to perform a wide range of mixing, signal processing and routing functions. AudiaFLEX includes up to 24 I/O channels in totally flexible combinations of inputs, outputs, and acoustic echo canceling cards currently offering 807 combinations.
In Sydney’s
courtroom 19A,
there are 24 channels of array processing, three zones, each with two
speakers. Each speaker has two drivers, allowing for eight parallel speaker combinations.
On top of this, the Audia handles the mics, which come into the system,
go through equalization, routing, delay and echo cancellation. There is
an automixer and then the signal goes out from the Audia to the
speakers.
Leembruggen and crew helped refine the Audia automatic mixer. “We gave them a lot of input on the qualities we were looking for,” he declares, “and Biamp combined that with their extensive knowledge and have come up with a very good one that is the best on the market. That’s important here because with this operation we have to have absolute control over mics being on or off and this works best. It is very responsive, no latency and is very solid.” All of which makes it cost effective as it saves on extra equipment and provides operational efficiency, is clean and tamperproof, and is a very finely balanced machine. The High Court continues its traditionof turning the wheels of justice and now utilises the most sophisticated digital audio networking technology, all the while sounding great. |
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system we know today. Located in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, the
court utilises advanced technology to allow for remote video testimony.
The audio and video aspects of the High Court need to be of high quality
and reliability for maximum comfort and performance. 
“We
opted to use Biamp’s Audia system,” states Leembruggen,
“which is a multipurpose box that allows
simplicity of audio design while at the same time providing
state-of-the-art technology in audio networking and software enhancement
