Stops in Australia, Jakarta, Hong Kong, Macau and Tokyo wrapped up a couple of big weeks of touring and training for Symetrix’s Training and Special Projects Manager Chuck Larson. A part of Symetrix’s award-winning tech support team, Larson delivered hands-on instruction of Symetrix products to groups throughout the APAC region.
The tour began with the Integrate trade show in Melbourne, Australia and three days of demoing and talking to some very interested parties about Symetrix products with distributor PAVT (Production Audio Video Technology).
“We had a very good showing this year at the Integrate trade show,” Larson explains. “There was a lot of interest and energy around our brand and the Composer 7.2 release. For our demo, we connected to the following alliance hardware: Attero Tech, RDL, Visionary Solutions, and Powersoft. It was fun being able to show active/live integration of these partners. People could walk up to the T-5 (Touchscreen Controller) and control Visionary Solutions and Attero Tech unD6IO-BT. It was fun to see people’s reactions when you could activate the Bluetooth pairing from our T-5, connect their phone and then have audio control from the T-5. People were also very excited to see the Powersoft monitoring and email modules that are coming out with Composer 7.2.”
After another couple of training events in Australia, it was on to Jakarta for multiple-day, in-depth trainings learning about the Symetrix product line in detail. The second day of training included building hotel site files as a group. This included 2 site files; the first had 6 DSP and a few xIn 12 and xOut 12. Larson explains, “We completed 80% of the functional file. All Dante, routing, room combine, emergency announcements, and control (including ARC-3) was created. All they have left to do is build their T-5 control screens and add filters to the audio processing. The second file was a Prism 4×4 for extra meeting rooms; this file is complete. We asked their main programmer what he thought of the Symetrix approach. He said Symetrix had more features and was more flexible than other products he had used.”
In Hong Kong, the specialized training was for a group who has built an impressive SM (stage management) show cueing & paging system that runs mainly off Radius 12×8 EX and xControl. They have created over 12 of these systems that are currently in use all over the city. The session introduced the upcoming Composer 7.2 features. All the updates in one form or another solved current questions/process for their current deployments, so they were thrilled with the new features.
A short ferry ride away, a training/meeting in Macau introduced some dedicated Symetrix users to a few of the newer products, as well as the latest Composer features. The biggest reaction was the update to the Matrix Selector, which allows drop-down menus for source selection. This is a huge feature for these programmers because they use a lot of controls in their control screens. Being able to save real estate on the interface by removing button-based source selection is a big deal for this environment. The next biggest reaction was from the e-mailer module. Notifications of system failures or problems are critical. With the emphasis on the need for enterprise management services, e-mail notifications are a big step in that direction.
A final stop in Tokyo wrapped up the tour. “They were excited to see the changes and updates to Composer 7.2,” said Larson. “Change Unit Type was very well received. They also were excited for all the SymVue updates, UpDown Fader, hot keys for re-sizing fonts, Matrix Selector update w/drop-down menus and faster text editing.”
