INTERVIEW: DAN WITTENBERG, APPLICATION SOLUTIONS LTD Platform alterations Phil Ward talks to ASL’s Dan Wittenberg about applications and solutions: the next generation
AS PRODUCT manager for UK manufacturer Application Solutions (Safety & Security) Limited (ASL), Dan Wittenberg has been steering the company’s technology into a new era since joining in 2010. The founders of the company had spent nearly 10 years establishing the brand in core VA for transport, via a series of analogue devices, and now Wittenberg and the team stand on the crest of networked crossovers to new markets. ASL was dreamed up in
East Sussex by engineering graduates Sousan Azimrayat and Peter Stewart. They began as engineering consultants but, once contracted by Millbank to work on the (London Underground) Jubilee Line extension’s VA in 2002, just as Millbank relocated to Manchester, things took a significant turn. If Millbank wanted to relocate, not every employee did: a core of expertise was left in the south and, fortuitously, joined ASL to complete the London Underground contract – placing transport applications at the very heart of ASL’s commercial being. The flagship products became the VAR series routers and V400 amplifier mainframe, but now a new generation is taking root: Vipedia-12, an IP-enabled audio distribution breakthough.
What stage was the portfolio at when you came on board? A few years ago, ASL’s VAR and V400 PA and VA technology really was at the cutting edge of efficiency. Adaptive Class D
amplification meant it was particularly efficient when it was off-load. Essentially, you didn’t need to turn off amps to save energy. With VA, of course, this means fewer batteries and smaller systems.
Is that what you inherited? No, the next stage of ASL was to add AoIP to these centralised, analogue systems. This was developed for a particular UK rail project, TransPennine Rail, and saw the advent of the VIPET, an analogue audio-to-IP gateway, and the VIPA
www.installation-international.com
ASL installed over 8,000 field devices across 16 communication and security systems at St Pancras International rail station in London. The platform was ASL’s iVENCS 3D Station Control System
of that is an interface to
Lab.gruppen’s PLM range of amplification, which provides a clear roadmap to more than just voice alarm and the integration of stadium sound reinforcement.
What does the new version add?
software stack, our core AoIP program. It began as a way of receiving, decoding and encoding audio over IP, and developed into a system that allows remote update of audio messages – a very distributed solution where audio doesn’t need to be streamed; it can be triggered remotely throughout a very large site. Other features were added that took it beyond AoIP, such as SIP and other audio transmission protocols that have more features than general public address systems need – like very tight synchronisation of audio between different devices. The software stack was gradually built up into a very powerful PA solution, and began to be licensed to quite a number of people as a product in its own right. You can come to us, buy the VIPA stack and integrate it into your own control systems. So VAR, V400 and the VIPA stack
were the stage we were at two or three years ago – about the time I started with the company.
What led you in the direction you’ve taken? We kept on coming up against these requirements for an IP interface, all the time, and because the development was cumulative we ended up with multiple devices in a rack in order to be able to provide an IP-enabled VA system. The other issue was the ageing DSP in our routers – excellent 10 years ago, but reaching its limits as features were added over the years. It’s still a useful product, but for systems that need a little more ‘grunt’ it has been superseded. The core of VAR is a collection of analogue inputs and outputs, with internal conversion, and a large DSP engine in the middle that will switch between them.
How does Vipedia-12 change this paradigm?
It’s a quantum leap. The two main issues it resolves are: it’s a single box that supports IP networking; and it has a substantially improved DSP capability. The features are much more contemporary and competitive too, and it supports Dante.
What stage is Vipedia at? We’re about to roll out the second incarnation. Mark 1 is currently installed at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London, Ibrox soccer stadium in Glasgow and other non- transport locations, so the first attempt to integrate Dante networking has already expanded our customer base beyond the original core and into the realms of sport and entertainment. At the heart
The original version is a fantastic product for larger, distributed PA/VA systems that demand high-quality audio. It’s a modular, expandable, card-based system, but the hardware to support a backplane like this is very sophisticated. We’re not losing sight of our core market by any means, and for voice alarm at rail stations a backplane that can support 64 inputs and outputs is not necessary: what they really want is a 6- to 12-zone VA system. Vipedia-12 – essentially Mark 2 – crosses over between those two markets both in price-point and technology. It’s modular to an extent: each 12-input, 12-output unit can be joined locally to provide up to a 48-input, 48-output router and, instead of a backplane entirely populated with different cards for different purposes, each router has the space for two expansion cards. That’s where the crossover into new markets is provided, from an audio networking perspective. The base model is optimised for centralised transport, retail and some leisure applications; the IP networking and Dante capabilities take us into decentralised systems with digital audio transmission. That’s the way forward.
www.asl-control.co.uk May 2013 23
‘[Vipedia-12] is a
quantum leap… The features are much
more contemporary and competitive too, and it supports Dante’
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