Sennheiser’ Spectera audio equipment was central to the world premiere of The World of Hans Zimmer – An Immersive Symphony, at the Metronom Theatre in Oberhausen, Germany. The concert focused on the music of Zimmer, a German film composer, who himself spoke to the audience in the form of a larger-than-life, three-dimensional projected image.
Presented by Semmel Concerts and accompanied by lighting, sound and stage technology from Satis & Fy, the hit show delighted more than 22,000 fans at 15 sold-out concerts from 23 January to 2 March.
Behind the scenes, monitor engineer Thorben Ströhlein and RF manager Werner Schmidl deployed Sennheiser’s Spectera – a wideband, bidirectional digital wireless ecosystem – to provide some of the musicians with in-ear and line/mic signals as part of the Spectera Pioneer Programme.
Schmidl and Ströhlein had first considered using Spectera only as an in-ear system. But then they thought: why not make use of the bidirectional feature? Schmidl went on to equip many of the musicians with Spectera beltpacks for both in-ear monitoring and line/mic signals.
Schmidl set up the packs using the Spectera WebUI: “I was really pleased about this because I was able to use my iPad. And not only that, it also eliminates the risk of malfunctions after computer updates,” he commented.
The IEM (in-ear monitoring) function was used by Ströhlein and by vocalists Carla Chamoun and Futurelove Sibanda, as well as by percussionists Mareike Eidemüller and Benjamin Leuschner, Andreas Kurth on drums, and Christoph Bönecker, the keyboards player, accordionist and musical director of the production. Overall, Ströhlein handled a total of 22 monitor mixes.
The in-ear transmission performance of the bidirectional Spectera beltpacks immediately impressed those who had previously only been accustomed to using analogue in-ear systems. Ströhlein said: “There’s no noise, it all sounds amazingly good and the sound is incredibly wide on the headphones. The microphone signal is also very good. Everything sounds just as it should.”
He added: “With analogue systems, I have a lot more dropouts, but Spectera made the production much easier. Situations like ‘every time I turn my head there’s noise’ just don’t occur anymore. Once the green light is on, I know that everything is functioning properly. You can work much better like that.”
