Built it as the city’s electricity plant in 1906, Denmark’s city of Randers Municipality converted the premises that now house into a performing arts complex in 1990. Værket (the works) stages theatre, musicals, lectures, classical concerts and contemporary touring productions, and has recently updated the L-Acoustics ARCS II system originally installed in 2016 to better support its work.
The Store Sal is the larges indoor room on the site and the hardest working. It seats 1,005 across a stalls floor, a first balcony, upper balcony and side balconies, and changes shape with the programme – becoming a 400-seat theatre one week, a classical concert hall the next, or opening its orchestra pit for opera, ballet and large-scale concerts. Opening the pit moves the nearest seats back, so the front of the system has a different job on an opera night than on a theatre night.
This used the ARCS II system installed in 2016. The brief for its replacement pulled in two directions – to deliver uniform horizontal and vertical coverage across all four seating levels, with speech intelligibility to match and headroom for high-dynamic-range concert productions, and all but disappear. Nothing could cross the sightlines from the side balconies of place too great a strain on rigging.
Værket turned to long-standing partner and L-Acoustics Certified Provider Matrix Sales to design, supply and install the new system and train the in-house team in its operation.
‘L-Acoustics has long been our preferred choice, and we have enjoyed many positive experiences with the brand over the years,’ says Operations and Production Manager, Christian Sadolin Linnet Sørensen. ‘When the time came to upgrade our sound system, it was a natural decision to build on our existing platform and invest in the new L Series loudspeakers.’
The multi-level layout set the puzzle. One system had to reach the stalls, the first balcony, the upper balcony and the side balconies with the same response, without crossing a sightline or imposing on the room, and the rigging allowed a single suspension point for the flown subwoofers.
Matrix Sales took the options into L-Acoustics Soundvision with the L-Acoustics Application team verifying the design. ‘Soundvision allowed us to quickly narrow down the available options and identify an optimal solution,’ says Matrix Sales Manager, Ashley Cooke. ‘We could accurately predict which system would deliver the best results and quickly determine that the L2D was by far the best solution.’
L2D answered both halves of the brief at once. Its progressive vertical directivity carries the same response from the stalls to the upper balcony, and the compact format delivers that performance from an enclosure small enough to leave every side-balcony sightline clear. Two L2D on either side of the stage cover the stalls and the first balcony, with six KS21 flown directly behind them in two groups of three on a custom-fabricated bracket that makes the single suspension point work.
Three further KS21 can be deployed at stage or floor level when a production wants more weight at the bottom. Five A10 Focus serve the upper balcony and the upper side balconies, and ten X8 fill the front rows and the front side balconies. Twelve X12 are on hand for stage monitors. A P1 processor, two LA7.16i, two LA12X and six LA4X amplified controllers power the system, while six LS10 switches run Milan-AVB with full redundancy.
A single preset recall switches the system between coverage settings to suit the hall configuration in use, including the performances that open the orchestra pit.
The clearest measure of the upgrade shows up in the box office. Every seat in the Store Sal now sells at full price, because not one of them sits in reduced coverage. ‘House and visiting engineers are consistently impressed by the even coverage throughout the audience area,’ says Cooke. With the same response in front of them wherever they work, the technical team builds mixes that hold up across every production format, and the controlled low end has measurably improved conditions on stage.
The Værket technical team were already familiar with L-Acoustics Network Manager, so the handover took just a single day of training from a certified Matrix Sales trainer. ‘From the outset, we maintained a close and constructive dialogue throughout the upgrade process, exploring and testing numerous configurations to achieve the best possible listening experience for our audiences,’ Sørensen reports. ‘There has been tremendous enthusiasm for the new L Series across the venue from day one, and the upgrade has made a significant difference to the concert experience for both audiences and artists alike.’
More: www.l-acoustics.com