With branches throughout Germany and further afield, Neumann & Müller is one of Europe’s largest providers of high-end event technology. A long-time user of Cedar Audio’s DNS (dialogue noise suppression) processors, the company recently added two DNS 8 Live multichannel noise suppressors to its inventory.
Although very new, the DNS 8 Lives have already been used in several complex live-sound situations, including the renowned Semper Opera Ball, held in Dresden. ‘The difficulty with the Semper Opera Ball is that the entire hall is audience area – the dancefloor is on the stage, and there are even additional, movable stage elements that raise the audience behind the stage,’ says Dominique Liebscher, who served as freelance sound engineer for N&M at the 2013 Ball.
‘Guests can move freely throughout the entire space, and the presenters – who wear headset mics – move freely among the people, making it hard to separate their speech from other loud sounds in the hall,’, he explains. ‘Worse still, the presenters sometimes stand directly in front of the PA speakers, so it can be extremely difficult to achieve an adequate level within the hall without feedback.
‘In the past, I resorted to a two-channel Cedar DNS, using one channel for the podium microphone, and the other for the group bus controlling all of the presenters’ headset mics. Happily, the DNS 8 Live, which we used for the Ball in 2013, now gives me eight channels simultaneously, and I was able to use this to create a very tight sound with little background room noise. This gave me the opportunity to increase the level of the wanted speech, at the same time improving its intelligibility.’
The tight time frame for the event meant that he had relatively little time to install and fine-tune the complex sound system: ‘I couldn’t allocate much time to learning the finer points of the DNS 8 Live,’ he says. ‘This was where its Learn mode was so important and beneficial. This works intuitively and effectively, and made it possible for me to identify the target noise and achieve the desired quality very quickly, and above all, to hear the results instantly.
‘When using previous DNS processors, I used the controls for the individual bands to target the noise in defined frequency ranges. The DNS 8 Live allows this approach too, further extending its uses within the live sound environment, so I’m looking forward to spending time with the Detail mode and seeing how this will work with the forthcoming web browser control interface.’
More: www.cedaraudio.com
