Return on Investment

[mazzarak]

OK, so we've established that you guys have been around the block a few times, so the question is...

what is the worst install you've ever seen/ever had the misfortune of having to help setup?

We do business for a major bank in the UK. They moved recently to a new premises and the Executive Boardroom was furnished with AV goodies and VC equipment. Conscious that they wanted to stay modern, they went with a Sony 6000 with integrated amplifier.

Rather than use desk mics, or, heaven forbid, the actual Sony mics, they chose to hang mics from the ceiling. Imagine if you will 12 golf balls suspended from the ceiling with string. Except the audio would probably have been better with 12 Titleist Mk IVs hanging there. Testing proved that the audio was better with the air con turned off, but if you did that, you had to turn the air con for the whole floor!

The first flagship call was a charity do with some member of the Royal Family, who gave a moving speech to 7 associated offices, not to mention a VCR recording, and none of us could hear a single word.
Not surprisingly the CEOs don't use it much.
Total spent (apparently) - £200,000
(hope no one from there reads this...)

so who can do better than that.

[George]

Oh my gosh I am trembling with temptation to tell my story. Unfortunately some people that I've worked with and know me IRL (maybe because I use my real name here:)) wouldn't be happy about that.

I do have a story about a site I did as a young VTC Tech in Hawaii. This was a 2 Star general's headquarters office. When I got there they were running a Rembrandt II CLI with some pretty ancient a/v equipment. Their backup system was a roll-about PictureTel Concorde 2500 that used a madge 60 to dial out. This was 1998 by the way.

The Rebrandt was in a rolling stand with 2 monitors as well because it had been a roll-about system before they "upgraded" {snicker} the room to a full studio by adding a wall with giant 8x10 rear projection screens and sticking the rebrandt in a control room behind it. The upgrade was the problem...

They installed ceiling mics, like you mentioned mazz but their genius took it a step further. They wanted ceiling speakers too!! Yup you guessed it, they installed them right next to the ceiling mics wherever they could find space. But hey let's not stop there, let's put a glass top table right below the mic and speaker array to give it that extra feedback reflection we all desire. What? Not satisfied with all those devices? Yeah let's go ahead and add table top mics on top of the glass top table because when you adjust the audio to help cancel the echo from the ceiling fiasco above, the end users complain that they can't hear us!

Oh the fun we face. Situations like this are why I believe the CVE and TCT training should be extended to more inclusively cover a/v issues but that's just my 2 cents.

[pbraatelien]

Mazzarak,
I cannot really do better than that, but I will tell you that all the ceiling mic installations I have ever sold have turned south (gone awry). I did one at a Fortune 500 company (in spite of the fact that we recommended against it) and now they are mad at us and working with another company that will sell them more stuff that does not work!!!

Another installation in the same company (different division) reinstalled desk mics after the ceiling ones failed.

The ONLY system I recommend (and can get a good demo out of--without actually setting it up in their conference room) is the Tandberg Audio Science. It really does work---the only problem with it is aesthetics. It is a big chuck of Plexiglass hanging from the ceiling that does not go well with Boardrooms. It is most often used in a training environment, so its appearance does not seem to matter---