According to Felipe Vargas, a few years ago there were few AV users, today there are many more, and they continue to grow, so staying at the forefront in the market, and being a reference forces us to continue studying and putting into practice the various technologies and concepts.
Richard Santa
After declaring himself a frustrated musician, Felipe Vargas decided to dedicate himself to professional audio taking advantage of his skills and facilities acquired with his musical training in Classical Piano at the School of Musical Arts of the University of Costa Rica. Thus began the history of this Costa Rican within the audiovisual industry, which has more than 20 years of experience.
"At the Angelus Choir in Costa Rica, in 1991, I learned how to mix, connect equipment and solve technical problems quickly and effectively. I immediately started working at Juan Bansbach Instrumentos Musicales, a company in which I was commissioned, in 1993, to create the area of installed projects and also manage the bose and Shure performances for the country. That's where it all started," he said.
Since then the professional career of Felipe Vargas has not stopped and the projects in which he has participated are counted throughout Latin America. By mid-1997 he was working in Medellin, Colombia, at Disctronics Pro, related to brands such as Biamp Systems, Crestron and Barco.
Then he went through Yamaha Panama, sales manager for Latin America of Biamp from Costa Rica, same position in Shure from Illinois and in Bose again from Costa Rica. By 2009 he served as Project Director of Lima Sound Contractors in Peru, and later as Project Engineering Manager at Novotic, Chile.
Currently, our Professional of the Month for this edition is at the head of the company he founded in May 2015, AV Consulting Group Latin America, a consulting firm in audio, video and automation systems design based in his native country. And since the first of February 2016, he shares his work with the management of the Project Department of Juan Bansbach Musical Instruments.
Improving sound in churches
Felipe Vargas has stood out in the industry for his designs and installations for churches and temples. His interest in improving the audio of these spaces arose in the tours with the Angelus Choir, through which he identified that in the churches the audio system was terrible and they ended up lending their microphones.
"That's how I realized the need there was. And over the years I've also found that audio professionals don't engage with churches. This is a captive market, with large and demanding needs. Little by little I got involved with more and more churches, to discover the great potency they have today," he said.
There are more than 325 churches in which Felipe Vargas has intervened to solve their acoustic problems and intelligibility of the word, not an easy task if one takes into account that most are ancient constructions in which no acoustic concept was included and have particular architectural conditions that make it even more difficult.
Among them are the cathedrals of Lima, Costa Rica and Chile, as well as the church of Nuestra Señora del Cármen in Panama and the Votive Temple of Maipú, in Chile. For each project it is based on acoustic design and modeling systems that allow it to develop a suitable solution for each space.
One of the anecdotes he remembers from his career is related to the installation, in 1997, of the sound system of the Cathedral of Ciudad Quesada, in northern Costa Rica. "We mainly installed the acoustic coating to reduce the reverberation time of the enclosure from 11 seconds to less than 2.5 seconds. At 21, I had no idea of the dimension and magnitude of what I was doing, until we finished it, and I said to myself what did I get into! Fortunately everything went very well. Today, almost 20 years later, the acoustic system and coating are still working perfectly."
An industry with many possibilities
14 hours of work a day divided into two companies confirm Felipe Vargas' passion for the AV industry. He assured that "Really my work is my hobby. For me, audio, video, etc., really are my favorite hobby, my hobby, my passion, not just my job. The moments that remain free of me are dedicated to my piano studies, and to the collaboration with the sound system of the Angelus Choir".
Given his knowledge of the AV industry in Latin America, he stressed that the size is much larger than is believed. "Many times we deceive ourselves by our own sales, but there really are many more integrators than we know, and that by a biased view we assume that the market is smaller than it really is."
He added that "The immediate future I see with a great sea of opportunities, in which we have to work in education and training with customers and end users, and, why not, the competition as well. On many occasions more and better technological solutions are not implemented due to the ignorance of all these, especially by it people".
On the evolution of the industry that he has witnessed, he stressed that more and more users are looking for digital solutions, with protocols such as HDBT and Dante, but who really do not know the technical implications that this entails. In addition, they often ignore the importance of their own Ethernet network, to ensure the transmission of audio and video in real time.
"A few years ago there were few users, today there are many more, and they continue to grow, so staying at the forefront in the market, and being a reference forces you to continue studying and putting into practice the various technologies and concepts, which in many cases you find poorly used. But there are those who want to continue working with analogous and outdated concepts, which hinders the development of the industry."
Finally, the director of AV Consulting Group pointed out that the main challenge of an AV professional is to keep up to date with the various technologies that are being used, both at the level of DSP and AEC uses, as well as the HDBT, AVB, Dante and less and less Cobranet protocols.
"Making sure that your team knows all these technologies and being able to transmit knowledge to each of them is a challenge. There are many variables and details that must be included to ensure a correct handling and application of each of these technologies. Another complex challenge is to configure reliable solutions, but that are saleable, because in many cases the client or end users do not understand the complexity behind such basic concepts as HDMI, HDCP, EDIDs and others, "he concluded.
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