The Raleigh-Cary Jewish Community Centre in Raleigh, North Carolina is set in a
beautiful, thirty-acre campus that features the Steven N. Guld Family Centre, an
outdoor pool, and an outdoor area with walking trails, a stocked lake, an
amphitheatre, a basketball court, and a playground. The centre is in the midst of a
sizeable expansion, which started with a renovation of the family centre and an
update of the pool facilities. Among the many improvements are new sound
reinforcement systems both for the centre’s 100-seat multipurpose room and for the
pool. Local A/V integration firm Avant Systems Integration designed and installed
the new sound systems, relying on Ashly Audio DSP, amplification, and user control
to power a 5.1 Danley surround system for the multipurpose room and a Danley
OS-80 fully-weatherized loudspeaker for the pool.

“Designing the system for the multipurpose room was challenging because of all the
various ways in which they hoped to use it,’ explained Scott Carneval, president of
Avant. “First, they wanted a solid 5.1 surround sound system for movie nights, but
that potentially conflicted with its use for presentations and meetings, where a
distributed system would normally be the solution.’

An Ashly Pema 4125 combined 8×8 matrix Protea™ digital processor and four-
channel 125W network amp collects inputs from four Shure wireless microphones
(two handhelds and two lavalieres, with a distributed antenna system that covers
the multipurpose room and the pool) and various music input sources (chiefly Sonos
Connect) and input plates. The Pema 4125’s amplifier channels power generic in-
ceiling loudspeakers in adjoining overflow rooms and in the pool snack shop. A pair
of its DSP outputs feed an Ashly ne8250.pe eight-channel 250W network amplifier
with additional on-board DSP, which powers five Danley SH-Micro loudspeakers and
(using two bridged channels) a Danley CS-30 theatrical subwoofer.

The beauty of the design is that the ne8250.pe’s remaining six inputs accept the
output from a Denon DN-500AV surround-sound preamplifier, which keeps the 5.1
signal in the 5.1 room, whereas any other input can be fed through to any other
location in the facility. Moreover, presentations and other input types only get
routed to the front two loudspeakers. A 137-inch Da-Lite motorized screen at the
front of the room complements a Hitachi CP-WX8255A projector. A Denon Blu-ray
player, Apple TV, and a computer input serve as sources to the video system.

An additional output from the Ashly Pema 4125 feeds an Ashly KLR-3200 two-
channel 1600W amplifier, which in turn powers the weatherized Danley OS-80 that
covers the pool (its other channel will eventually power a Danley subwoofer that
was cut from the original system for want of budget).

Already a hit, the new sound reinforcement systems at the Raleigh-Cary Jewish
Community Centre will undoubtedly inspire similar systems in the buildings and
facilities that are slated for construction in the coming years.