ANNAPOLIS JUNCTION, MD – With a name like Crystal Serenity, it better sound good. So when the cruise ship, the flagship of the fleet operated by Crystal Cruises, needed a transport solution for their 600-seat Galaxy Lounge, which required a long cable run, Kyle Toth, entertainment technical director, chose LightViper EF2 Ethernet.
"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," Toth noted. "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," Toth added. "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," Toth continued. "Fiberplex provided the EF2s 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."
For more information, please visit www.fiberplex.com and www.lightviper.com .
