Between architectural limitations on loudspeaker placement and unforgiving acoustics, historical buildings present some of the gretest challenges to audio systems installers.

On such challenge is presented by Germany’s Federal Administrative Court – or Bundesverwaltungsgericht. Established in 1953 as supreme instance of the general administrative jurisdiction, it is one of Germany’s six Federal Courts. The building was erected between 1888 and 1895 by the architect Ludwig Hoffmann. Originally, it housed the High Court of the German Empire (Reichsgericht) but after the end of World War II, Leipzig became part of the GDR and the High Court was moved to West Germany. During the years of the socialist regime, the courthouse accommodated various non-judicial institutions, two museums and a dubbing studio.

Since German re-unification however, the building has been renovated and many of the historic rooms have been restored. A particular highlight is the Great Courtroom, with windows of stained glass and gilt carvings on plankings and ceiling showing the crests of the constituent states of the German Empire. Moreover, the Court has its own historic ballroom with beautiful frescos and paintings and a dining room with a marvellous carved ceiling.

With its history and architecture, the building’s renovation centred on restoring its aesthetic. However, with the space occupying such an important judicial function, intelligibility was paramount. The challenge facing A/V specialist Studio Elektro Akustik (SEA) was to find a solution that would provide the required levels of intelligibility, without interfering with the renovated aesthetic. The choice for Project Engineer Andre Scholze was QFlex, Tannoy’s digital beam-steering loudspeaker system.

QFlex uses multiple channels of advanced amplification and DSP to produce beams of acoustic energy, which are directed on to user defined target areas. With this ability to focus acoustical output, comes better speech intelligibility in highly reverberant spaces such as those found in the Great Courtroom. The discrete profile of each array means that aesthetic impact is also minimal, particularly compared to the far less effective, and less appealing, alternative of installing a distributed system with a large number of loudspeakers around a given space.

‘Intelligibility had to be guaranteed, and I knew that the Tannoy QFlex product would produce the results the client wanted,’ Scholze says. ‘In the end, it was a pair of QFlex 32s that were the perfect solution for the Bundesverwaltungsgericht. Using Crestron control, the QFlex were relatively easy to install and set up, and because of the column design, were virtually invisible when compared with a conventional distributed loudspeaker set-up.’

The staff at Bundesverwaltungsgericht were so impressed with the result in the Great Courtroom, that it was decided to install another two QFlex 24s in the small courtroom, again using Crestron products for control.

More: www.sea-leipzig.de
More: www.tannoypro.com