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All Hail the Queen

Sound & Video Contractor - September 1, 2004

Byline: CHRISTIAN DOERING

The numbers are just plain big. After 5 years of planning and 15 months of construction in the shipyard of ALSTOM Chantiers de l'Atlantique at Saint-Nazaire in France, the longest (1,132 feet), tallest (23 stories), widest (137 feet), and heaviest (151,400 gross tons) passenger liner ever built has been completed: the Queen Mary 2, the flagship of Cunard line (which is, in turn, the flagship of Carnival Corp., its corporate parent).

As you might expect from her enormous scale, Cunard's newest Queen is also the most expensive passenger ship in history: it cost about $800 million to float this particular boat. Luxury features include a 20,000-square-foot Canyon Ranch SpaClub and five duplex penthouse suites, each with living/dining room area, minigym, private library, and private butler service (keep those in mind in case you should find yourself with a week and $45,000 to spend traveling between New York and Southampton, England). Two forward suites, by the way, are accessible through glass-walled elevators that rise along both sides of the superstructure. Christened in Southampton by Queen Elizabeth II on January 8, 2004, the Queen Mary 2 made her maiden Atlantic crossing to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. From there she departed for Rio de Janeiro and Carnaval. On her return, she crossed the Atlantic during the spring and summer, and she'll be visiting Canada and New England as the fall leaves turn. But no matter where it makes port, this ship is intended to be a destination in and of itself.

THE BIG PICTURE

The AV systems on board are equally impressive: the equipment list alone runs 35 pages. Between the many public venues, as well as passenger cabins for 2,620 and staff berths for about half that number - not to mention a network-quality broadcast center - this ocean liner has a wide range of entertainment and information requirements. To meet them, Cunard relied on Carnival's AV design partner Nautilus Entertainment Design (NED) of La Jolla, California. Associate consultant/project manager Bill Havens, associate consultant/audio designer Alan Edwards, associate consultant/project manager Michael Lindauer, and technical consultant Matthew Hodkinson were primarily responsible for the Queen Mary 2 project, which lasted three years from initial planning to commissioning.

"We design all the entertainment systems for Carnival Cruise Lines, Holland America Line, Costa Cruises, and Cunard Line," Edwards says. "When we first got involved with Carnival, we were reviewing previously written specifications and revising them to make more sense. Now we function as an owner's representative to resolve issues with the shipyard and make sure the client knows what they're getting. It's a more streamlined communication process, as opposed to having the yard subcontract out the entertainment systems to a design/build contractor."

NED worked closely with the architects and shipbuilders as well as with Harbor Marine Systems (HMS), which was responsible for the engineering and installation of the AV systems. "We meet with Cunard to get an idea of what they're looking for in the entertainment areas," says Edwards. "Then we look at the actual spaces and make some recommendations. The next stage is when we get architectural drawings of the public spaces and add our systems to those drawings. We develop a complete equipment specification and one-line drawings and hand those over to HMS for the engineering and installation: cable runs, mounting electronics, speakers, video monitors, etc. The cable is typically pulled by the yard to HMS's specifications: often a module will be wired up before it is brought to the dry dock. When the module is in place, HMS will bring in prewired racks or even prestuffed racks, terminate them, and get them welded in place. The last step will usually be to put the equipment in the racks." At that point, NED again assumes responsibility for commissioning the systems.

The sheer scale of the Queen Mary 2 project was challenge enough: NED's equipment spec lists 38 separate venues, from the Royal Court Theatre all the way to the luggage handling area. The three-year span from concept to commissioning presented another set of problems. "Some of the equipment we specified was just vapor when we did the design, including the Royal Court Theatre's [Yamaha] PM1D digital console," Edwards says. "I had been waiting for someone to produce a digital console that did what we wanted."

The time-lapse between design and commissioning often makes for last-minute system configuration changes, particularly signal routing. "They often don't quite know what they're getting until they go on board," Edwards says, "and then they'll tell us, 'This is how I need this system patched.'" It's the responsibility of NED as "owner's agent" to deliver for the show producers. The flexibility of signal routing in the digital domain makes things faster and easier. "With the PM1D, we reduced a whole rack of patch panels to a couple of digital patch rails and a couple of analog patch rails," Edwards says.

DIGITAL LOGIC

Edwards made extensive use of digital signal processing (DSP) throughout the Queen Mary 2. There are, for example, 39 Yamaha DME32 digital mix engines on board. That may seem like a lot of 32-bit DSP horsepower, but Edwards says he was really pushing the limits. "It doesn't take long, especially when you add individual EQs as well as group EQs," he says. "HMS approached us about the DME32, and we agreed, provided that they would use it in every room. One of the important things is to use the same DSP in every venue. That way if something were to happen to one unit, they could pull one from another venue, or if they carry spares on the ship, they can just drop a new unit in, drop the software in, and they're good to go."

The DME32s replace racks of analog gear and the associated patch panels. One benefit of digital technology is the ability to do virtual installations in software. "The DME32s provided four key tasks - system equalization, system delay, limiting, and routing. We 'roughed in' the Main Theatre setup here in the office," Edwards says. "Last fall was a particularly busy time for us, and I couldn't be in Saint-Nazaire all the time. On-site programming was done by Matthew Hodkinson and Graham Hall - the Main Theater DME program was completed by Thomas Nicks of Volume during the tuning of the main lounge."

NED left room for the audio technicians on board to reconfigure the DME32s if needed. "System EQs we consider part of our system design, so we password-protect those, but routing and the EQs on the end of the chain we leave open," Edwards says. "That way they can go in and route whatever they want to whatever areas they need." Settings for the Yamaha DSP engines can be stored on PC cards or transferred from a laptop through USB. They can also be accessed through serial control, in this case the AMX NetLinx system.

COMMAND AND CONTROL

"An important part of the venue design is how the systems are operated," Hodkinson says. "Trained technicians run the main venues, but the majority of the smaller venues are run by the hotel and cruise staff." To make things simpler for nontechnicians, NED specified the NetLinx control system for all venues. "Small AMX LCD keypads provide basic control of the Yamaha DME audio DSP units," Hodkinson says. "A generic panel layout allows source selection and control of the overall room volume as well as individual microphone volumes. Nontechnical staff can walk into any venue and know how to operate the audio system." Larger venues and those venues requiring remote control of equipment hidden out of the passengers' view are also controlled with NetLinx. Those operator interfaces are AMX touch panels, ranging from the Mini Color Touch up to AXT-CA10 ten-inch panels with video input for source preview in Cunard ConneXions, which are classrooms set up for in-person or distance learning. They can also be used for small group presentations or as overflow audience rooms for events that are held in the auditorium/planetarium. They can also be used as broadcast production centers if the required equipment is brought in.

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