Bodleian Libraries

The immediate catalyst was Blackwell Hall located within the Bodleian Library, the marble floored, 6 metre high atrium of the Weston Library. Despite being the libraries showcase public space, the hall offered no modern assisted listening provision, and its hard surfaces ruled out traditional copper induction loops. Meanwhile, visiting AV companies struggled to patch their feeds into the house Dante network without a tangle of adapters and last minute programming.

Aura answered the flagship challenge by delivering Oxford University’s first Ampetronic Auracast™ assisted listening system in Blackwell Hall, patching the Bluetooth broadcast transmitter straight into the existing Dante network over legacy Cat x runs and therefore avoiding any new cabling or disturbance to Grade I stonework. Because the preferred hardware was on a three month global back order, the team orchestrated a just in time schedule and carried out all high level work from 6am, removing the mobile elevated work platform before the hall opened to the public at 9am.

The finished system now blanket broadcasts high quality audio to every corner of the 12 metre high, marble floored atrium without individual device pairing.

A 16 port docking station and sixteen Auri receivers, complete with neck loops, headphones and ear speakers, sits at reception for visitors who lack Auracast enabled personal gear, while Dante patched input/output points behind the desk let external AV teams feed programme audio into the house system with a single cable.