The Brief
An Academy school in Yorkshire were undergoing renovations during the school holidays. They were making changes to their music department and required a solution that would allow the students to receive audio from their keyboard and computer, directly to their headphones that student’s wore.
The keyboard audio needed to be routed to a main PA system so that the whole class could hear it. They requested that we provide and install the necessary equipment, including the keyboards and the PA system. The school also had 18 computers installed and they required a keyboard for each station.
The Method
To create this solution we made use of 18 Yamaha keyboards each with their own Behringer mini mixer that had inputs from both the keyboard and the PC. The signal was sent from the mixer into a device that we custom built for this solution. Each workstation was fitted with the equipment and all of the cables ran from the audio converter and linked to the small rack that was located under the teacher’s desk. The teacher had a keyboard and a mixer that allowed for extra audio inputs with the signal running through the transformer into the rack. In addition the teacher had an AMX touch panel linked to a networked controller in the rack, allowing the Teacher to conduct the lesson.
The Benefits
This solution provided the client with a number of specific benefits. The AMX touch screen panel on the teacher’s desk gave them overall control and allowed them to remotely choose the audio sources for the student’s keyboards. The sources included the student’s headphones, the teacher’s headphones and the room PA system. The touch panel gave the teacher the option to turn off all students keyboards simultaneously. The mixers we used had an extra input, meaning that another instrument could be plugged in such as a microphone or a guitar. On a return visit, we connected an iPad to the system that allowed the teacher to have flexible control of the features of the AMX touch panel on an iPad that could be used from anywhere in the room.