ArrayProcessing proves a hit for Danish theatre installation
In the city of Herning, Denmark, the MCH (Messe Center Herning) group is one of Scandinavia’s largest congress centres, with buildings and arenas for conferences, sports events and rock concerts. Following a series of presentations and listening tests, a new d&b system has been installed in the MCH Theatre in Herning town centre, a venue for both conferences and live music.
“We wanted a premium brand system that would be rider friendly for both in-house and visiting engineers,” explains MCH’s head of sound, Tommas Hviid Kristensen. “So we asked a number of companies to tender. Each company set up a mono hang of their system so that we could hear them in the theatre and then decide which we preferred.”
Lars Baun Frederiksen, Managing Director of d&b Distributor in Denmark, Alfa Audio: “We had applied for the tender and had come along to the set up day. However, we quickly discovered when we were setting up that our sound card had broken, and due to the reasonably remote location of the theatre, it was a long drive for us to get a replacement, which meant we had very little time left in our set up slot. We literally flew the speakers, gave the system one or two quick tweaks, then just enabled ArrayProcessing – it sounded fantastic. Everyone at the theatre was impressed at how easy it was to make the system sound good, straight out of the box.”
The solution is mainly Y-Series, delivering complete flexibility for reproducing speech and music. “We wanted to use the Y-Series throughout the install,” continues Frederiksen. “There was a requirement for more powerful subs – not just in one place – to provide a little more flexibility when more power is required for larger concerts. So we decided to use the V-Series subs and had some extra ones added that we could put stage left and right if required.”
Four D20 amplifiers power the Y8 and Y12s with a D80 for the subs. Two d&b DS10 Audio network bridges, one at the front of house position and one at the amplifiers, make it possible to input AES3 signals into the Dante stream, and to convert from Dante back to AES3 going into the amplifiers.
For Frederiksen the d&b software package proved a compelling tool: “ArrayProcessing is calculated within the ArrayCalc software, which is regularly updated. There are presets in the software that you can design, so the system can be optimized for speech or music, along with changing its level, level drop, areas to be excluded or adjusting reflections. For example, you could tell the system to leave out the balcony, or perhaps you don’t need the sound to reach all the back rows if they’re empty. It is extremely powerful yet easy to use.
“The aim is to have the same optimum frequency response in all different areas of the hall. You can also remote control the whole system in the software too, via R1 running on the computer at the front of house. It’s so easy – once a customer has seen it, they are able to use it by themselves. It means there are no mistakes, since you can’t move crossover points, so the speaker system will always sound as good as possible.”
