Anyone familair with systems for playing music in malls?

[dubaifox]

We have been supplying music for a shopping mall from various music libraries.

The mall is using a state of the Art Ateis system (www.ateis-international.com) that is supposed to provide all types of signal processing, namely Automatic Gain Control, which will level out the volume of various tracks that may have different output levels, so that the music stays constant throughout the mall.

We got a call from the mall manager saying our music tracks are not consistent in volume. We called the company in Switzerland to be sure that this feature is possible, and they said yes!

But then we called the local guy who installed the system and he said, "It is not possible and we would have to go back and remaster all 270 minutes of music to make sure they are consistent".

We are not sure what to do at this point, but isn't this a pretty common feature for broadcast systems, to be able to level out music in an environment?

[crizdee]

Hi,

I would believe the company and not the fitting engineer who probably hasen't read the installation manual!!

Even itunes has this feature? it scans the entire library and then plays back at a consistent level.

Chris

[dubaifox]

Yeah, that is kind of what we thought.

We looked on the website of Ateis, and it has in the software a "Automatic Gain Control", which by it's name and description does exactly this.

We think the mall is not happy with the sound system, and the guy who sold it to them may be trying to point the finger at us.

[AE]

maybe they installed the wrong model? the less-expensive units do not provide automatic gain control.

[dubaifox]

maybe they installed the wrong model? the less-expensive units do not provide automatic gain control.

Are you sure?

We called the company in Switzerland and they said it would do this.

[AE]

i'm just speculating, but here's a quote from their website:

"in comparison with SINAPS-M, SINAPS-XM has following additionnal features: 1) automatic Gain Control:"

so it seems at least possible that there was a system installed without agc.

maybe they have the feature but it needs to be enabled? maybe it's not a very good product? maybe it wasn't installed properly? who knows?