In July 2011, the theatre left the old venue in the Großen Bleichen and now plays in the Bieberhaus at the Heidi-Kabel-Platz. With the move into the new house, also a new sound system was installed.
The theatre values the combination of natural acoustics and neat sound reinforcement; However, the planned musical productions also require a more powerful sound while maintaining high speech intelligibility. Therefore, the sound crew headed by Florian Buhr (Protones Audiotechnik) decided on the almost invisible LR7 micro line array of Alcons as well as the VR and SR pro-ribbon series from the Dutch manufacturer.
Since the new house with a seating capacity of 414 is acoustically designed, a very natural sound and coherent coverage is highly valued. "The perfect coverage and stunning depth imaging of the system creates an irreplaceable tool that is also easy to operate," said Florian Buhr.
As the venue is not a new theatre, but a former office and retail building, the sound system is subject to the architectural limitations. Due to the limited space in the front cross member, a centre cluster solution was the only way to largely cover the stalls and balcony. The Stage Systems team from Gelsenkirchen installed a centre cluster of six Alcons LR7.
In the front stage area two VR8 compact monitors (8" LF + 4" pro-ribbon HF) left / right in combination with two BF302 (2x 15") bass systems are used. To easily and effectively achieve the for theater productions important psychoacoustic effects, the VR8 front-fills can be also used in stereo. More VR8 monitors are fitted as delay speakers for the stalls and the seats under the balcony.
All systems are operated by Alcons ALC amplified loudspeaker controllers with DDP (Digital Drive Processor).
(Jim Evans)
