Hilton Anatole seeks Tannoy custom solutions

The Hilton Anatole hotel in Dallas, Texas, recently sought the services of Tannoy as part of the renovation of its lobby and atrium, following the announcement that the hotel would be the NFL headquarters hotel for the XLV Super Bowl.

Installations contractor R2W’s Dallas office was specified to handle the design and installation of a new sound system for the atrium, as well as a number of other systems required by the renovation. This consisted of gutting the existing lobby of the 1,606 room hotel and creating a new 11 story high atrium that features a prominent water element and new Media Grill + Bar. The 11,000 square foot space required an unobtrusive, distributed sound system for music playback in the area.

The hotel design team placed 25 custom light fixtures throughout the area and allocated space within the fixtures for loudspeakers.

“Our job was to come up with a system that would provide the audio quality that the hotel required while working within the space limits we were given,” explained Jim Nelson, R2W senior engineer. “I thought of Tannoy immediately. They have always been very helpful in creating custom audio solutions and the sound quality of their components is terrific.”

The custom light fixtures are square-shaped pillars, around six feet high; the lower two thirds, of which, are illuminated, while the top of the box is capped with an LED fixture aimed upward, with the area allocated for the speakers falling between the light and the cap, providing a compact space approximately 6” high by 12” wide and 12” deep.

“It was a clever way to distribute sound throughout the atrium very unobtrusively,” added Steve Reed, senior account manager at R2W. “Conduit was run under the floor to each location for the lights making it easy to add in the wiring that the audio system required at the same time.”

After evaluating their options, Nelson and Reed decided that the Tannoy 4” Dual Concentric driver (4DC Contractor Kit) would be the ideal solution. The 4” (100mm) driver with crossover is a contractor kit utilised in custom design situations such as this. The drive unit comprises of a mid bass cone and a .75” HF unit with neodymium magnet system. The mid-bass and tweeter sections of this constant directivity driver are coincidentally aligned to be a true point source, ensuring a wide and controlled dispersion for optimum coverage. 70-volt transformers were added to the units for the distributed system.

Because the lighting fixtures were being custom built, Nelson and Reed also worked with the lighting designer to make sure that the product would not only work, but also fit. Ultimately two 4” drivers were installed in each fixture.

“We built the drivers into each fixture and enclosed them with an attractive grill around all four sides of the pillar,” Nelson explained. “You wouldn’t even know they were there except for the music which was exactly what the hotel wanted.”