Founded in 1839, the Melbourne Athenaeum is one of Victoria's oldest public institutions. Today, the Melbourne Athenaeum is home to the Melbourne Theatre company and stages a huge variety of productions from comedy festivals, to concerts, opera, musicals and of course theatre all year round.
Due for a complete audio overhaul, the brief was for an audio solution that would be able to handle the extremely broad palette of acts hosted by the venue, whilst at the same time remaining visually discreet and easily reconfigurable by theatre technical staff. A combination of small form-factor systems from Coda Audio, Camco amplification and DiGiCo consoles, plus DSP from Xilica Audio Design and Apex were specified for the installation. The concept was for a high-powered distributed system that would not impact visually on the heritage theatre, while still enabling different zoning and system configuration to cater to the many types of clients that hire the theatre.
Melbourne's RTR Productions installed a total of 16 speaker zones throughout the venue, each fed by a dedicated DNC260N controller from Coda delivering proprietary DSP and speaker management to each zone. Four Apex Intelli-Z2 4-in/8-out digital processors then provide complete front-end control for time alignment, system tuning and EQ management.
Group Technologies' system tech, Paul Mossop, found the Apex range great to work with. "The main reason we opted for the Intelli-Z2 was not only due to their quality but the fact that they are really easy to use, allowing for simple preset creation and recall. The parametric EQ sounds great which makes it perfect for tuning, particularly in theatres. The analyser bridge lets you connect to Smaart easily for timing and measurement. Sonically, it's really accurate and considering it runs at 192khz, its impressively low on latency. The Intelli-Ware remote software interface is also excellent which is so important these days."
"The units can be linked together right out of the box without the need for additional hardware," he continued. "This is very clever design-wise and the connectivity between devices made setup really fast. Being able to copy settings from one unit to the other is something that not many units allow for and it makes things really efficient, particularly in an installation like this where several units are utilised."
Group Technologies' Drew Menard was also impressed with the amount of control users had over the units. "Remote monitoring over IP is great when a system tech requires support or changes need to monitored remotely. This is a huge advantage in providing solutions extremely fast and from virtually anywhere. Having the ability to lock the units off so that they can't be tampered with as well as the extensive system logs which the Apex handles are also excellent."
The Ding Dong Lounge, this time installed by sales and integrations company, Soundcorp, was a completely different kettle of fish. A full-blown live music venue and nightclub, the venue's requirements were very different from the Atheneum. Now sporting a powerful Nexo Geo system, the venue's biggest worries were with noise limitation. To that end, an Apex Hera sound level controller and an Apex Argos sound level limiter were installed to contstantly monitor and control levels during the venue's Weekender club nights. "They ensure that the room stays between 95 and 101 dB, saving both our licence and staff's hearing," explained Ding Dong's in-house production manager, Wil Burtson. "From midnight we are a club, and without this system, I doubt we'd still be trading!"
(Jim
