With hit German TV shows including Let’s Dance, Deutschland sucht den Superstar (DSDS), The Masked Singer, and daily soaps such as Unter uns and Alles was zählt televised from the Coloneum in Cologne, MMC Studios and dBTechnologies have devised a fully flown sound reinforcement system to serve the 1,315-capacity venue
The requirements included a band playing live at times, along with the simultaneous use of headset and handheld microphones, and judges’ microphones that are kept permanently open. Additionally, no loudspeakers were to be visible on camera, no subwoofers or monitor wedges on the floor.
‘On a TV production, we’re dealing with several constraints at once – sightlines, acoustic shadowing, the separation of broadcast feed and house PA, and above all, a high gain-before-feedback with permanently open microphones,’ explains dBTechnologies Technical Director, Jochen Gotzen.
‘The consistent tonal character running right through the VIO series was the decisive advantage here – we could freely combine different system types without introducing any tonal discontinuities, and we flew the entire rig to keep the floor clear and take the equipment out of shot,’ adds Jens Szczygieleski of Atlive, who led the implementation of the project.
The systems were sourced from the VIO Rental Network, with 24 VIO L1610 line array modules in three arrays as mains, and stalls and perimeter zones served by an additional 26 VIO L1608 in six short arrays, supplemented by four VIO X310 as point-source systems and four VIO X205 as delays. On stage, six VIO W12 provide monitoring.
The design and aiming of every system were carried out in advance – by MMC’s Martin Antulov and Marius Dimke in Ease Focus, so that coverage, level and frequency response could be matched across all audience areas at the simulation stage. ‘As FOH engineers, what we value most about this system is the combination of control and consistency,’ they state. ‘On a live TV show in particular, where there's no second chance, it gives us the assurance that the system performs as planned.’
The heart of the concept was the low-frequency section. With floor subwoofers ruled out, a central, flown sub cluster of eight VIO S118 was used – arranged in an arc and configured symmetrically or asymmetrically depending on position, to steer the low-frequency energy precisely onto the audience.
‘The subs are our zero,’ says Gotzen. ‘We defined the flown sub cluster as the acoustic reference and time- and phase-aligned every other system to it. With the right crossover, the whole system sits in phase. The result is noticeably better localisation and a considerably higher gain-before-feedback – exactly what you need with permanently open judges’ microphones and a lively house.’
All systems are networked via Aurora Net and driven over a redundant A2Net. Because all VIO systems are active and carry onboard DSP, there is no need for an external processor or matrix layer. On the signal side, only the routing had to be implemented. In Aurora Net, every loudspeaker could be displayed individually, grouped by tier, fine-tuned in delay and frequency response, and monitored throughout.
‘Every loudspeaker is on the network, each has its own DSP, and the phase response across the VIO family is identical,’ Szczygieleski adds. ‘That makes the transitions between the main system, stalls, delays and out fill extremely clean – for the studio audience, the impression is of a single source, even though a large number of systems are working in the room.’
‘What we value most about this system is the combination of control and consistency. On a live TV show iwhere there’s no second chance, it gives us the assurance that the system performs exactly as planned,’ emphasise Antulov and Dimke.
The project is being presented as ‘a textbook example’ of how a homogeneous, high-performance PA can be delivered even under the tight constraints of a live TV production: through a precise analysis of the requirements, careful system selection and positioning, multiple simulation runs, and on-site tuning. What remains decisive is keeping the acoustic goal firmly in view throughout the entire process.
More: www.dbtechnologies.de