"Intercoms are the lifeline between the artistic staff and technicians," said Hans-Willem de Haan, head of sound and video department at Muziektheater. "We have a long-standing relationship with Clear-Com, so when we decided to move to a digital intercom system, we chose the Clear-Com 4000 matrix in combination with the FreeSpeak beltpacks because it was the only system that could meet our demanding criteria, and we were confident of their reliability."
"We required an intercom system with at least 50 wireless beltpacks that would give us digital audio transmission throughout and be able to operate simultaneously and seamlessly across a complex site," said de Haan. "Because all of our performances are live, we needed a system with a high level of redundancy. With Clear-Com, we also had the added confidence of working with a company that we knew to be highly skilled and experienced in producing this type of intercom solution."
The Clear-Com system chosen by the Muziektheater includes 16 digital intercom panels, 50 FreeSpeak wireless programmable beltpacks, 40 FreeSpeak antennae and eight FreeSpeak antenna splitters. FreeSpeak is the world's first digital wireless intercom system. Flexible and scalable, it can operate in complex or remote locations where line-of-sight communications are not practical. Using a cellular network of advanced antennae directly connected to the Clear-Com matrix, FreeSpeak is able to serve very large wireless systems.
"This is one of the first digital intercom installations in a major theatre in the Netherlands," said de Haan. "The project has been challenging on both a technical and logistical scale, and it delivered enormous insight into the implementation and maintenance of such a large system with so many daily users."
(Lee Baldock)
