L’Opéra Bastille in Paris – a venue that hosts some of the world’s most elaborate operatic productions – has been equipped with Ateïs International IP-based communications technology.
Ateïs finished work on the building-wide paging and stage monitoring system at the end of 2010 and is now upgrading the public address installation. Unusually, Ateïs France installed the paging and monitoring equipment itself, rather than simply supplying products to a systems integrator.
“On this project products didn’t exist,” said Jerome Beyls, commercial director of Ateïs France. “So the best way was to deal directly with the Opera so that new products could be developed to match what they needed.”
The new paging system covers 14 stages, 233 dressing rooms and 13km of corridors. The core of the installation is Ateïs’ Vox@Net PA distribution server and controller. Based on IP technology, this is the backbone of the monitoring and show call system.
Each dressing room has a monitor loudspeaker and a touch screen. Messages relayed around the building can be made on one 23 stage call stations positioned around the venue, while message scheduling and playback is possible from the Vox@Net Hiperviseur control suite.
Relays of the live performances are processed and distributed through Ateïs new UAPg2 DSP audio matrix, which is connected to two mics hanging over the stage. Beyls says the original intention was to use an older generation product, the ES22T, but as the UAPg2 developed it was regarded as being more suitable for this particular installation.
The overall result of an effort that also saw Ateïs develop bespoke software and install network switching was, said Beyls, “a project that has given the Bastille Opera a system that will develop and expand with the years. It has also produced new Ateïs products that we know will benefit the commercial audio market as a whole.”
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