Mexico. The insurance multinational Mapfre has experienced continuous growth throughout the region since its creation in 2002. The head office is located in a tower 124 meters high, with 27 floors and five underground floors. The company turned to Shure to equip two important areas in the tower with wireless audio technology: the auditorium where conferences of up to 150 people are held and a private conference room for executives.
In order to address a wide variety of needs, including solving Mexico's congested radio frequency environment, achieving easy installation, and offering reliability, the Shure Microflex wireless system was chosen for this work.
From the beginning, Mapfre requested a reliable, high-performance wireless system, which its employees could operate without the help of a dedicated IT staff member. Ease of use and recharging capability were the main factors, as was the assurance that the system operated without interference inconvenience. Microflex's elegant wireless solution, with high-quality sound reproduction, networked controls, versatile microphone options and easy installation, was perfect for Mapfre conference environments.
"We helped High Technology Corporate and Residential (LUMBRA), a leading provider of audio and video integration and installation solutions, to choose the Shure Microflex wireless system for Mapfre due to the versatility of its installation. Shure products require very few antennas to guarantee intense signals in all microphones and the system uses UTP cables that were already installed throughout the Mapfre auditorium," said Manuel Tapia, engineering and project manager at Representaciones de Audio, S.A. de C.V.
The auditorium of the Mapfre Tower operates with three MXWAPT8 access point transmitters and a four-channel MXWAPTA access point transmitter-receiver to ensure the sharpness of the frequencies in the wireless transmitter microphones. There are four MXW8 gooseneck base transmitter microphones on stage and 20 MXW6/C surface wireless transmitter microphones distributed in the audience seats for questions to be asked.
For presenters who need to move around the stage, four MXW1 hybrid body transmitters with internal microphones are available. There are also two ULX-D digital wireless systems with an MX153 headband subminiature microphone and an MX150 subminiature lapel microphone to meet the presenter's preferences.
The conference room, used for high-level executive meetings, has a smaller facility and features an MXWAPT8 access point transmitter located in the ceiling of the room and an MXWAPTA access point transmitter-receiver to complement the transmitter.
There are two MXWNCS8 networked charging stations that offer nine hours of continuous use for the transmitters while allowing remote monitoring of the battery status on the charger and indicating the remaining operating time in hours and minutes. For clearer dialogue among meeting attendees, audio installation was completed with ten MXW8 gooseneck base transmitter microphones.
Considering Mexico's current transition to high-definition television, dealing with digital and analog TV channels simultaneously, and the licensing of the 700 MHz band to communication services, the radio frequency landscape was the biggest concern when choosing audio equipment for Mapfre.
Chosen to eliminate these drawbacks, the microflex wireless system's automatic frequency coordination prevents unexpected interference. The system can actively scan available spectrum and coordinate the supported clear frequencies for each microphone channel. In addition, the Dante networking transmits low-latency audio without compression in a convenient way over standard Ethernet networks.
