RTS brings Palais des Congrés de Paris into the IP era

Situated in the heart of the French capital, the Palais des Congrés de Paris is one of the most important and active convention centres in France.

Hosting every type of event from medical conferences to the Tour de France presentation, the Palais des Congrés needs a powerful yet flexible AV infrastructure to ensure it can meet the needs of its various users. At the heart of this system is an RTS intercom backbone which has been modernised to work with OMNEO IP networking architecture.

At over 40,000 cubic metres, the Palais des Congrés is a vast complex boasting meeting spaces of all sizes. The largest of its 29 conference rooms, Le Grand Amphitheatre, can seat 3800 participants, while the smallest caters to 90 people.

Various spaces within the complex are in daily use, with the in-house AV team ensuring that the technical infrastructure for all events is functioning correctly and with the utmost efficiency. In step with the evolving day-to-day demands of a venue complex of this size, Palais des Congrés recently updated its AV infrastructure to become fully IP networked.

For the intercom side of the upgrade, the venue turned to local RTS partner Pilote Films. The team at Pilote Films highlighted that OMNEO would enable the congress centre to get the most out of its IP architecture, as it allows RTS equipment to integrate into existing network infrastructure with the benefit of a range of built-in device control and audio technologies, such as Dante digital audio. Equally, the backwards-compatible nature of RTS equipment allows seamless integration with RTS legacy systems.

The fully IP-based system now features an ODIN 96-port digital matrix interconnected with an ODIN 48-port matrix alongside 40 KP-Series keypanels and several PH-88 headsets. Completing the solution are 13 ROAMEO AP-1800 access points and 24 ROAMEO TR-1800 beltpacks, with six of the access points and eight beltpacks reserved exclusively for Le Grand Amphitheatre.

“A fully IP-based solution from RTS allows us to deploy intercom devices simply and quickly across the whole 40,000 cubic metres of the Palais des Congrés,” explains Peter Siffre, audiovisual technical coordinator at Palais des Congrés. “OMNEO media networking technology fully supports Dante, which allows us to connect to all our Dante products without adding any additional interface. Moreover, the OMNEO protocol guarantees an excellent audio quality, even at very long distances.”

Reflecting on the overall project, Siffre can see the advantages that the migration to IP and the RTS equipment has brought to the congress center. “RTS intercoms allows us to distribute the intercom system over two ODINs that have been placed as close as possible to the analogue connections,” he states.

“Some spaces are modular and could be arranged to comprise private meeting spaces. Our mobile PA systems have been equipped with an RTS intercom key panel and are deployed to cover a single private room. In this configuration it is important that the convention centre’s general intercom system does not pass through these private rooms, and that is managed automatically by the smart internal logic of the RTS devices.

“We continue to evolve our infrastructure by connecting our old two-wire system to our IP components,” concludes Siffre. “RTS has successfully brought the Palais des Congrès into the IP era.”