Ongoing reconstruction and expansion of the Lithuanian National Drama Theater (LNDT) in Vilnius has already seen the installation of DiGiCo SD9, SD12 and Quantum 338 mixing consoles and is progressing with its three performance spaces interconnected through an Optocore AutoRouter smart fibre patchbay, providing enormous audio routing flexibility in a fully redundant solution.

Being masterminded by Sonus Exsertus, this €19m euro upgrade of a building founded in 1940 is its largest in 40 years. Last year a New Hall was opened, followed by a Small Hall for experimental and small-scale productions. With the existing Great Hall refurbished, the LNDT – one of the country’s foremost publicly funded cultural institutions – will provide an overall seating capacity of 1,200.

Sonus had been already earmarked for the project’s New Hall and Small Hall when the company took on regional distributorship of Optocore, in November 2021. Since it was already the DiGiCo distributor, part of the attraction was the Optocore console integration, offering remote preamp and SD series compatibility.

The Small Hall boasts an SD9 console at FOH with the Meyer Sound PA connected through DiGiCo SD-Nano Racks (with an additional large SD-Rack on stage). In the New Hall an SD12 has been detailed at FOH, and in the Great Hall, the FOH console is a DiGiCo Quantum 338 – all supporting the Optocore protocol, with the PA again connected through the Nano racks but with two SD-Racks at the stage end, since more inputs and outputs are required in the main space.

Explaining the background to the contract, Technology Engineer and Service/Support Manager, Darius Valikonis, confirms that Sonus approached the project virtually as a new-build, since the theatre was under complete reconstruction. ‘The system was really old, as the last major upgrade of the main auditorium was in 2009 – and although the machinery and mechanics were upgraded the sound or lighting systems weren’t.’

Exercising caution, he emphasised that the three halls would be on standard, cost-effective ST fibre connectors, and remain ‘physically disconnected’ from each other until final commissioning. It will then offer full bidirectional signal transport with all halls connected internally by Optocore optical loops, with the fibre terminated at the main server room where the Optocore AutoRouter is located.

Valikonis confirms that the venue-wide routing of signals had been one of the core requirements – enabling the sound to be sent in different directions to the audience: ‘AutoRouter is a very good system because you can operate in one venue and if you need different inputs or outputs from the other venue, it’s possible to do big events in two or three different places, interconnecting between them.’

Compatible with stand-alone Optocore networks, DiGiCo fibre loops and other protocols that support single- or multi-mode optical fibre, what AutoRouter does is create an intelligent star out of an Optocore fibre loop topology, closing the loop automatically between active devices and mobile stage boxes. Thus there is no longer the need to patch cables manually, as this intelligent patchbay will automatically detect active devices and form a redundant loop, without user interaction. This speeds up system layout and configuration for any production.

‘The main benefit of AutoRouter, is that in the New Hall and Great Hall there are at least two possible points where the sound engineer can place the mixing console, so there is no need to do any additional patching or connecting,’ Valikonis notes. ‘You just disconnect from one place and reconnect and you are in the loop – therefore it’s much easier and faster for the user. The equipment is very easy to use and no set-up is required; you just need to make sure there is a good connection for the optical fibre and then it’s just plug-and-play.’

This agile solution in a building that has also been treated acoustically, had been one of the challenges that the integrators managed to overcome. Another, according to Sonus Head of Technology Mindaugas Indrašius, had been how to integrate all this modern technology into the historical spaces of the theatre, included in the protected heritage and decoration features, without compromising the architecture.

However, Sonus can reflect on a successful design and deployment – the first project of this magnitude where the company has been able to place AutoRouter at the hub of a DiGiCo control environment via the optical loop.

Aside from Mindaugas Indrašius and Darius Valikonis, other Sonus representatives engaged in the fit-out were Senior Project Manager Jokūbas Dargužis, Installation Supervisor Gintas Paulauskas. And System & Audio Engineer Tomas Ždanovičius.

See also: 
Lithuania’s LNDT installs DiGiCo mixing systems