Hamburg’s Altonaer Theater opts for Alcons

As part of a modernisation of the venue, a new Alcons LR7 pro-ribbon line array system has been installed at the Altonaer Theater in Hamburg, Germany.

The requirements for the new house system were – as usual in the world of theatre – quite complex. First, the entire auditorium had to be provided with an even sound coverage, without requiring additional speakers and delay lines, while the high-quality transmission of speech, music and effects was also a must. And because the Altonaer Theater also offers musicals, additional emphasis needed to be placed on intelligibility.

As a result, two systems have been set up and calibrated, with Protones from Lüneburg responsible for handling technical services.

According to Andreas Meyer-Delius, technical director for the Altonaer Theater, "both systems achieved a uniform sound coverage and met our pricing expectations."

The Altonaer Theater decided on two flown arrays of five Alcons LR7 each, while under the stage 2 x BF302i were installed as low frequency support, and Alcons ALC2 and ALC4 amplifier controllers with DDP (Digital Drive Processor) were used for system drive and amplification.

With dimensions of 359mm/14.1in (W) and 173mm//6.8in (H) and a weight of 8Kg/17.6-lb, the LR7 system promises uncompressed, high-performance and uncolored sound, as well as ‘exceptional speech intelligibility, precise dispersion control and a high SPL.’

"The sound and vocal intelligibility of the LR7 was immaculate and significantly better than that of the comparative system," said Meyer-Delius. "In addition, the Alcons system has a uniform signal transmission in all frequency ranges, without the so-called "beauty dent" in the 1,000 Hz range. This gives the engineer greater freedom in the sound scaping."

Dirk Dechring, project manager at Protones, added: "It is a discrete system that provides a very high speech intelligibility. So the theater production is in the foreground, not the technology."

http://www.alconsaudio.com