Wide News
From recording, broadcast, postproduction and A/V
Cavatina Hall opens in Poland’s Bielsko-Biała
Poland’s new Cavatina Hall is the first concert hall in the country to be built and managed entirely from private funds. Located in the city of Bielsko-Biała, the unique multi-functional building combines office and cultural spaces set over six storeys in more than 9,000sq-m of space, and includes a recording studio as well as a 1,000-seat concert hall.
The concert hall has a modern A/V infrastructure designed around an Optocore backbone that supports an L-Acoustics L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal sound system and a pair of roving DiGiCo Quantum 338 mixing consoles, and boasts Poland’s largest RTS Roameo wireless intercom system.
RAK’s immersive action
Throughout its 46 years of operation, RAK Studios has hosted music pioneers ranging from David Bowie and Pink Floyd to Arctic Monkeys. Now, the London facility is moving forward again with a top-to-bottom rebuild of its historic Studio 4 into a Gold Standard space for immersive mixing, complete with scalable 9.1.4 monitoring based around Genelec’s The Ones monitors.
RAK had been in discussions over an immersive space for a number of years, with Studio 4 earmarked for the project from the outset. Flexibility was key to it being able to adapt to any project that came through its doors. ‘In a project like this, you either do it properly, or you don’t do it at all,’ says Studio Manager, Emma Townsend. ‘We had to tear the whole thing down and start from an empty shell.’
Sennheiser at the Munich Kammerspiele
Like many of his colleagues, tonmeister Wolfram Schild – Head of Audio at the Munich Kammerspiele, where he has worked for more than 20 years – uses the Sennheiser term Mikroport whenever he refers to wireless audio.
‘We have been using wireless systems from Sennheiser in our theatres for more than two decades now,’ he says. ‘In the meantime, our analogue wireless channels have largely been replaced by modern digital versions. At the Schauspielhaus venue, we replaced the products from the Sennheiser 5000 series with Digital 6000 systems around three-and-a-half years ago. We carried out a similar upgrade at the Therese-Giehse-Halle in summer 2021.
Our House offers moving experience in Amsterdam
Powersoft’s Mover transducer is at the heart of a new four-dimensional nightlife experience in Amsterdam, where visitors dive the history of electronic dance music from roots to the present.
Located in Amsterdam’s Rembrandt district, Our House has been part of the electronic music scene since the 1980s, and recently became a digital storytelling museum, offering a 75-minute journey into the genre via interactive exhibits, shows and performances. ‘When we came here about two years ago, the place was very analogue,’ recalls General Manager, Jeroen Jansen. ‘There was a sound system, strobes, smoke machine and some LEDS – that was about it.
EM Acoustics delivers Fantastically Great sound
The new musical Fantastically Great Women Who Changed The World opened in Liverpool in April, and is currently in on a nationwide UK tour with West End aspirations. Described as an ‘inspirational and empowering celebration of our strong sisters from history’, the show is based on the award-winning picture book by suffragette descendent Kate Pankhurst.
Dramatist Chris Bush and Number 1 hit songwriter Miranda Cooper (Girls Aloud, Kylie Minogue) have adapted it into a bright, exciting musical for young people that celebrates female icons in a contemporary, pop context. Sound designer, Rob Bettle, designed a front-to-back EM Acoustics audio system based on EM’s Reference Series loudspeakers.