An historical building that retains important community functions, the Grand Hall of the Stadthaus in Cottbus, Germany, is used for meetings, events and theatre shows. Since the hall serves different and important purposes, a new sound system was recently commissioned to provide the flexibility required. However, initial plans included a system made up of almost 20 loudspeakers, and would have seriously affected the aesthetics of the venue.

Diego Noack (Procurement Manager of audio specialist G Fleischhauer ing Büro Cottbus), suggested that Tannoy’s QFlex digital beam steering loudspeaker array should be able to give smooth, even coverage in the acoustically challenging space, and after some careful modelling, he decided upon the QFlex 40, with one speaker either side enough to fill the Grand Hall.

‘With only a pair of speakers we could keep the historical flair of the hall,’ Noack explains. ‘Once installed, the QFlex system seemed to blend with the architecture very well. As well as that, it sounds great, and we even achieved better speech intelligibility than with conventional loudspeakers systems.’

As Tannoy provided the main system, Noack and his team also used Tannoy solutions for supplemental spaces, including a balcony area and meeting room spaces: ‘We used two CMS 401 DCE Eyeballs as fills for the sub-rank and two i7 loudspeakers for the balcony,’ he says. ‘The Grand Hall is used for meetings of delegates, but it is also sometimes used as an event-location or even for theatre. There are also two further meeting rooms, which we equipped with a pair of i7s. We went with the same brand as it was important for us to retain the same sonic qualities throughout.’

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