Annapolis Jct., MD, January 19, 2010. When the Crystal Serenity, the flagship of Crystal Cruises, needed a transport solution for their Galaxy Lounge, they chose the LightViper™ EF2 Ethernet transport. Kyle Toth, Entertainment Technical Director for Crystal Cruises, explains their decision; “The LightViper EF2’s are being used in the Galaxy Lounge on Crystal Serenity, Crystal Cruises flagship vessel. The 600 seat Galaxy Lounge is the featured entertainment venue where we present nightly entertainment consisting of large scale production shows, headline vocalists and instrumentalists, classical concerts and comedians. We also have quite a full daily program with our Creative Learning Institute which present many keynote speakers and a full lecture program”.
Toth describes the challenge, “Due to the nature of the installation, the distance of the cable run between the stage DIO CORE and the FOH mixer was 626 ft. - too long for us to be comfortable with running CAT 5 to transport the Ethersound. Ethersound is a great protocol, but CAT5 cable has its limitations. The LightViper EF2's allowed us to take full advantage of the Ethersound protocol and overcome the distance limitation. We are using a pair of LightViper EF2's to transmit/receive multiple channel digital audio signals from the stage to the FOH mix position. Analog audio comes into the Innovason DIO CORE where it is converted to Ethersound. The Ethersound data is then output from the DIO CORE and fed into the LightViper EF2 onstage. From there it is carried to FOH via 626 ft. of duplex plenum rated fiber-optic cable to a second LightViper EF2 at FOH, which then converts the signal back into Ethersound and connects to the Innovason SY 48 digital mixing console.”
“Implementing the LightViper system was a snap”, said Toth. “Fiberplex provided the EF2’s with a fiber-optic cable that included a pulling eye. We pulled the cable, rack mounted the units, plugged everything in, and the system worked perfectly. Fiberplex also worked with us to get this system delivered on a very tight schedule - before we left port!”
