ProAudio Technology sounds Altmarkt and Cockerwiese in Dresden
In August, more than 40,000 visitors came together for the large-scale event Dresden #unteilbar 2019, to campaign for a peaceful and free society. Among them were well-known acts and artists like Silbermond, Woods of Birnam, Megaloh, Max Herre and many more.
Sound reinforcement systems from ProAudio Technology were used at Altmarkt and Cockerwiese in Dresden. The production company ‘Produktionsbüro Dresden’ was responsible for the entire technical organisation and logistics and was supported on site by a team from ProAudio Technology.
The Cockerwiese has with a size of over 200 x 100 meters high requirements to realise a homogeneous reproduction of speech and music (world music, rock and rap) perfectly. As front PA, two full-range capable, over 7 meter long line-arrays with VT20 and VS18F were used. Due to the width of more than 100 meters, outfills with VT16 lines were installed to the left and right. In the stage roof, a short VT16 line filled the middle in front of the stage.
A cardioid bass array of 12 VS18 clusters (2 front – 2 rear – 2 front) was used to achieve sufficient pressure in the infra range. As usual for large-scale sound reinforcement, after 50 meters delay lines were used for refreshing with two further full-range capable slopes of VT20 and VS18F.
The front PA with VT20 required 12 VT20 as nearfill, each located on a cardioid sub-cluster. This ensured that front PA and nearfill were perfectly matched in terms of maximum achievable sound pressure.
At the beginning of the event, a smaller setup of VT8 line arrays with a cardioid bass array of 30 VS15 was used on the Altmarkt. The stages were also equipped with extensive monitoring from M10 and M20 as well as an HT16 tourset as sidefill.
On the Cockerwiese the networking and remote of the 4 amp cities (front stage left, stage right and delay stage left, delay stage right) was done via 1 Gbit TCP/IP networks and locally at the amp racks via RS-485 industry standard. In total, only 23 system amplifiers were used for the full-range front PA, outfills, center and full-range delay lines, which is unbelievably few considering the number of loudspeakers! The resulting setup of the amp cities achieves enormous efficiency for logistics and reduces cabling and power requirements to a minimum.
The energy supply for the 23 Hoellstern high-performance amplifiers and ProAudio Technology systems could be designed highly efficiently. For both delay towers, each with 15 VT20 line array elements and 10 VS18F subwoofers, a total of only two 400 V CEE 16 A connections were required. For the main PA (each side 18 VT20 and 12 VS18F) and outfill (each side 16 VT16) two 400 CEE 32A and two 400V CEE 16A were used in total. In view of the powerful PA, this is a convincing overall system from an electrical point of view as well.
The PA was tuned neutrally and thus received a balanced, homogeneous sound pattern across the area. Every FOH manager could thus relax and set up his or her desired mix. The FOH technicians visibly enjoyed playing a powerful and clear sound across the square. The network was able to follow the PA’s relaxed output to rock and rap via the diverse monitoring options of the K2 Remote software: everything in the green with sufficient headroom! This clearly showed that the PA was exactly the right size for this sound reinforcement application.
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