With a move to new premises in a former office and retail building, Hamburg’s Ohnsorg theatre has opted for an Alcons pro-ribbon sound system to overcome the architectural limitations. In July 2011, the theater left its old venue in the Großen Bleichen and now plays in the Bieberhaus at the Heidi-Kabel-Platz. A new sound system was installed alongside the move into the new theatre. Ohnsorg values the combination of natural acoustics and neat sound reinforcement. However, the planned musical productions also require a more powerful sound while maintaining high speech intelligibility. Therefore, the sound crew around Florian Buhr (Protones Audiotechnik) decided for the almost invisible LR7 micro line array of Alcons as well as the VR and SR pro-ribbon series from the Dutch manufacturer. The new house, with a seating capacity of 414, is acoustically designed to achieve a very natural sound and coherent coverage is highly valued. “The perfect coverage and stunning depth imaging of the system creates an irreplaceable tool that is also easy to operate,” said Florian Buhr. With the Alcons sound system, the Ohnsorg theater effortlessly achieves the desired high level of intelligibility and naturalness for the spoken word and equally impressive and powerful sound for musicals. The venue is not a new theatre, but is housed in a former office and retail building, so the sound system is subject to the certain architectural limitations. Due to the limited space in the front cross member, a centre cluster solution was the only way to largely cover the stalls and balcony. The Stage Systems team from Gelsenkirchen installed a centre cluster of six Alcons LR7 units. In the frontal stage area, two VR8 compact monitors with two BF302 bass systems are used. To easily and effectively achieve important psychoacoustic effects in theatre productions, the VR8 front fills can be also used in stereo. Furthermore, particular emphasis was placed on the installation of more VR8 monitors as delay speakers for the stalls and the seats under the balcony. www.alconsaudio.com
