Located roughly 45 minutes east of Seattle, in the North Cascade Mountains, Casino Snoqualmie offers patrons a Vegas-sized gaming and entertainment experience with distinctly northwestern flair.

In keeping with the Pacific Northwest location of the casino, Casino Snoqualmie is designed not unlike the interior of an exceptionally large log cabin, with polished woodwork, granite accents and exposed beams. In all the facility offers approximately 51,000 square feet of gaming space, as well as access to an 800-1000 capacity event center and multiple restaurants and bars. With all that space the install required a rock solid distributed audio system, and, simply put, Tannoy was the best choice to fit the build. Providing optimal coverage, uniform frequency response and high definition across the board, from the smallest of spaces – in the elevators – by way of three Tannoy CMS 501’s, to areas where the ceilings soar up to 60 plus feet above patron’s heads.

Typically ambient noise is an issue in any public space, but casinos tend to suffer a greater amount owing to the endless hum of the slots and competing sound sources in close proximity to one another. “Probably the biggest challenge was the different ceiling heights,” says Kevin Hill, of Tukwila, WA based, Triamp Group, installer on the build. “It’s not real glamorous,” he adds, “but Tannoy’s are a great distributed audio speaker,” In the end, that’s what was required for the system to be functional, reliable and transparent, long-term.

“The main casino is a very high-peaked open space,” explains Andy McArthur, Principal Consultant at Las Vegas based ECCS Inc., lead designer on the installation. “We had to have enough power to fill that void, while fitting into some pretty interesting architecture.” To do so Tannoy CMS 601 DC’s were placed in the higher open areas of the main casino and buffet area to provide consistent coverage. Additional CMS 601’s were also used in the event center, where the system doubles as a PA for corporate events and galas and exceptional definition speech reinforcement was essential. The build also incorporated 164 Tannoy CMS 501 DC’s in the lower ceilings of the specialty spaces like the cigar bar, the sushi restaurant, and the fine dining room, as well as the massive main gaming space and various common areas.

Holding up to the fury of the region’s notoriously wild weather was another concern; since Snoqualmie opened in November of 2008, the northwest been pounded by even harsher weather than usual. Here again Tannoy fit the bill, with six i6TAW ICT’s serving balconies attached to the bar and fine dining restaurant, and 16 i8T AW’s at Snoqualmie’s main drive-up entrance, providing a durable, high SPL solution, tailor made for challenging, high traffic, high noise areas.

For McArthur’s part, the choice of Tannoy for the Snoqualmie build was informed by the most basic of criteria. “Quality, availability, price and support,” he says simply. “The fantastic thing about Tannoy is, when you pick a product, you can count on the fact that it will be available, and it’ll be available in a timely manner to the contractor.” Nor does McArthur have any concerns when it comes to Tannoy’s long-term backend supply and maintenance. “They’re not like some manufactures that tend to change their models, take things out of production, and not tell anybody. They are really good at being forward about what they’re going to do.”

As important as that type of service is to ECCS’ business, and as integral as it is to the success of installations like that at Casino Snoqualmie, it’s also central to Tannoy’s approach to doing business in general. Though continuously innovating and refining their product line, the Tannoy process of innovation is an ongoing evolution that never outpaces their customer’s ongoing needs.

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