Specialising musical productions, Teatr Rozrywki, in the Silesian city of Chorzów, has recently completed an extensive renovation, and at the end of 2012 completed the modernisation of its audio infrastructure.

Commencing with the smaller 100-capacity auditorium, the project moved on to the main 577-seat space. The main challenge facing Piotr Kozłowski and Wojciech Grządziel from system integrator, Pracownia Akustyczna, was to provide independent gain control from the FOH and monitor positions.

One of Poland’s leading design consultants, Pracownia Akustyczna has been responsible for all acoustical and electro-acoustical modernisation of the venue in the last few years: ‘We have been using digital audio networks in our designs for almost ten years,’ says Kozłowski. ‘Many systems today use much more digital kit than analogue, so it is natural to want to use some kind of digital cable to glue all this signal jungle together.’

The chosen solution was an Optocore X6R-DualMic topology, and so the system design was based on three X6R-FX-DualMic and nine X6R-TP-DualMic, providing 96 mic connections with independent gain control for each channel. In addition, two X6R-TP-16LO interfaces were pinstalled as return devices from the consoles – with all X6R units located in the stage rack.

For the FOH position, the theatre commissioned two Yamaha M7CL-48 desks equipped with Optocore YG2 and YS2 I/O cards to allow direct connection to the Optocore network (the same card combination is used with the M7CL-48 down at the stage end). As a result, all three Yamaha consoles are able to control the Optocore preamps using the German manufacturer’s Yamaha Emulation Mode. The two FOH consoles control the primary channels 1-96, while the monitor console operates selected secondary channels 1-48 or 49-96 – giving the respective sound engineers the unique ability to control the gain independently.

The third section of the system is installed in the amp room, where two Yamaha DME64N processors, fitted with YG2 cards, provide feeds to the L-Acoustics amplifiers, with a further Optocore DD2FR-FX Madi interface enabling the Madi connections.

Lukasz Tobola, technical director of Polish distributor, M.Ostrowski Sp.j, supplied all the Optocore equipment and is satisfied with the solution: ‘Optocore is one of our leading brands and well known in Poland,’ he says, at the same time confirming that this is the biggest Optocore system installed in the country to date.

‘It is a perfect solution for any system – whether large or small – as this flexible, scalable and elegant solution fits almost any application. The core requirement here was to switch to the digital domain, offering the same or better functionality than a traditional analogue theatre system, with a mic splitter.

‘Optocore was the only solution that offered independent gain control of the real analogue preamps, without any digital tricks. The DualMic device is simply brilliant and will certainly become our best-seller in the Polish market.’

More: www.akustyczna.pl
More: www.optocore.com