One of Russia’s most famous theatres, the Central Academic Theatre of the Russian Army (CATRA), has upgraded its technical specification with an Alcons Audio system.
The 1520-seat main auditorium displays performances of Russian and foreign theatre, musicals, classical and rock concerts. It has won the prestigious Crystal Turandot for the Chekhov play The Lower Depths and also hosts games from the country’s humorous – and exceptionally popular – Klub Vesyólykh i Nakhódchivykh (KVN) league.
“The existing audio system was installed in the 1990s and it no longer met modern audience expectations. There was a particular issue with loud live music events, which modern systems are expected to cope with without any distortion,” commented Natalya Kondrat of the LTM Music Company, who supplied and installed the Alcons system.
Kondrat went on to describe how the building’s architectural significance meant there were limited areas the equipment could be installed into. After demonstrations of the Alcons Audio system created a high level SPL with no distortion, it was selected for installation.
The entire Alcons system was installed within the theatre’s proscenium arch. It comprises left and right arrays, each including a mid/high frequency column and a low frequency column. 14m high mid/high columns each contain Alcons Audio QR18 and QR36 modular two-way column loudspeakers, and QM36 and QM18 modular loudspeakers, with 12m high bass columns featuring QB363 subs. Driving the system are 28 18in pro-ribbon drivers, 84 6.5in M/F drivers and 26 12in bass drivers.
“With the QM18s and QM36s extending the array length and enhancing the nearfield performance of the system, the entire audience is sitting on axis, everywhere from the front rows of the stalls to the back of the balcony,” commented Alcons co-founder Tom Back. “As well as offering extreme projection control and superior coupling and coherency of the wavefront, ensuring that every seat in the house enjoys exceptionally high quality sound, the system also goes all the way down to 32Hz.”
“The Alcons team did a lot of work to ensure that the system satisfied all of the requirements. Thanks to its compactness and its principle of vertical installation, we could supply a system that delivers high power and very high quality sound for every type of production, but which is effectively invisible,” added Kondrat. “The theatre staff are 100% happy with it, it has fulfilled everything that has been asked of it, and more!”
