Harman Intl., parent company of such brands as JBL, Studer, Soundcraft and Crown, is a beneficiary of the City Center development in Las Vegas.
Recently opened after a rough ride over the last year, City Center is a cluster of buildings off of Vegas’ famed “Strip” containing hotels, condos, retail, public spaces and entertainment venues.
To link all of these facilities and provide entertainment, communications, etc. several companies took on the AV job —“rumored to be the largest consolidated AV system design in history,” according to Darren Smith, a senior designer who worked at PMK Consultants and Technology West Group, two of the three main AV contractors.
According to a Harman press release, Smith stated: “We estimated the cost at over $100 million for the PMK-designed portion alone. That included 60 venues, thousands of ceiling speakers, several complete concert line array systems, more than 20 equipment rooms, hundreds of input-output panels, thousands of fiber optic runs, and the list goes on.”
A local equipment company rep, Jim Bowles of Sound Marketing estimated that the development contained for Harman, 700 Crown CT series amplifiers, 750 BSS London network processors and more than 5300 JBL speakers. Controlling much of that equipment is Harman’s proprietary HiQNet.
