With campuses in Vallendar/Koblenz and Düsseldorf, Germany’s privately funded Otto Bensheim School of Management (WHU) hosts more than 1,500 students, for whom it has been investing in networked learning with a goal to record lectures using the latest and highest quality A/V and remote camera technology.

A comprehensive Panopto system plus a Creston signal management and media control system are now installed in the university’s lecture halls to provide first-rate quality video. Having planned and installed the video recording systems for the lecture halls, the A/V integrator specialists at Sigma realised that voice transmission confronted them with a very challenging scenario.

‘The client required a microphone solution across several lecture halls and seminar rooms. Students should be able to participate without needing to interact with a microphone, yet still follow the lecture without distractions,’ explains Sigma System Audio-Visuell CEO, Christian Backes.

System integrator Sigma System Audio-Visuell has begun the process of upgrading the audio components, with several lecture halls and seminar rooms now equipped with Shure Microflex Advance MXA910 Ceiling Array Microphones, allowing the university to create high quality educational content and lectures available to students anytime and anywhere.

While the lecture halls feature partially fixed seating, the flexible seminar rooms at WHU are used differently, as required. To cover all rooms without any variations in pickup quality, Sigma incorporated several Shure Microflex Advance MXA910 Ceiling Array Microphones. Each provides eight lobes for precise and automatic focus of the pickup area to the speaker or speakers.

Each lecture hall was covered using three or four MXA910 units while one MXA910 was installed in each of the multi-use seminar rooms.

The audio signals captured effortlessly by Shure’s MXA910 Ceiling Array Microphones are streamed to and from WHU’s Vallendar and Düsseldrof campuses and are delivered to students via an e-learning and streaming platform.

In addition to the white ceiling array microphones, which enable discreet ceiling integration, the lecturer is able to switch, while speaking, to a more traditional QLXD14E system with a lavalier mic and body pack.

‘Thanks to the MXA910 systems, recording and streaming is accomplished barrier-free, which is especially important for lectures involving active discussions. This allows lecturers and students to be heard from any position in the room with no loss in quality or volume level,’ Backes adds.

More: www.shure.com