The Jacquelyn is a luxurious private social club, described as “a larger-than-life legacy piece left to the Sacramento community by a husband who loved his wife,” the late Jacquelyn Anderson, who was a passionate and talented photographer. Sacramento Production Services (SPS), a regional provider since 1991 of full entertainment production needs with an emphasis on audio rentals, sales and installation, was called upon to implement The Jacquelyn’s AVL infrastructure, which included wireless audio essentials from RF Venue to enable dropout-free wireless microphone capabilities facility-wide.
A long-time client of SPS made the connection between the firm and The Jacquelyn project, says Keith Wackford, SPS’s lead designer. “In our first meeting with the design team from The Jacquelyn, it was apparent that audio, video and lighting would be extremely important to the ground-up build. The facility showcases all of Anderson’s work – over 80,000 plus digitized images and artwork being displayed on a two-story LED video wall located in a glass atrium that is visible from the street, as well as on 17 LG video monitors (eight of those roam the facility). The mandate was “not to impede the vision of the artist, Maren Conrad,” who was in charge of the project. “Maren is an amazing artist as well and a longtime friend of Jackie,” says Wackford. “Our team set out to design a world-class AVL system using some of the best products that the industry has to offer.”
“The design and installation had many challenges along the way, as most projects do,” says Wackford. “For us, it was about keeping up with the ever-evolving onsite changes, the wants and needs of Maren and her overall vision changes during the middle of construction. I was introduced as the guy that makes all of Maren’s crazy ideas happen, which makes me feel pretty good that we were listening and taking care of the client’s wants and needs.” The wireless audio demands of the project evolved during construction. “As the project continued to expand,” Wackford elaborates, “we went from one wireless mic channel to be used in one room into two wireless channels to be able to be used in any of the four special art and event rooms across the two floors, from the Wine Bar to the Black Box, the Gallery to the unique Library. The ability to have the microphones available for hassle-free use was important, as there would be no full-time AV personal on site. With a facility of this type, the appearance was the number-one priority when selecting any product that would be visible in the rooms. This is where RF Venue really shined, with their Diversity Architectural Antenna. Being able to be painted and just disappearing into the ceiling and walls might seem insignificant to some, but to this client, it was huge. Knowing we have both the technology and aesthetics from companies like Void, LG and RF Venue, really led to our success on this project.”
With antennas spread across four different rooms, an RF Venue 4 ZONE active antenna combiner was deployed to remove any complexity from combining the four Diversity Architectural Antennas to feed the dual-channel Shure ULXD wireless receiver, giving users the freedom to easily move between the facility’s spaces. “With the addition of band pass filters from RF Venue this added a bit of extra security to eliminate unwanted signals,” Wackford elaborates. “The entire AVL system is controlled from multiple 10-inch touch screens from Symetrix. We have a wireless routing page allowing for the two wireless microphones to be routed to, and controlled in, any of the four rooms. This ensures that only the wireless that is allocated for that room and that event is available, eliminating the ability of turning up a microphone in a room not being used.”
Wackford gives credit to the entire team – Brian Webber, on-site programmer; Nic Danielson, Symetrix and Visionary Solutions, off site programmer; Sacramento Production Lighting for lighting design and programming; and Alive Media as the on-site installation team – for a successful install. “How you know you have a happy client,” Wackford concludes, “is when they go into the Glass Box where the two-story LED wall is installed, kick the music to 11 over the Void speakers and dance in front of beautiful images in celebration of Jacquelyn Anderson and all the hard work of the entire build team. This is one project we will be super proud of for years to come.”
