News

Yamaha and Nexo update historic Swiss venue

Switzerland - March 2009 saw the completion of a refurbishment of a multipurpose school auditorium in the Swiss town of Wetzikon, which included the installation of state-of-the-art Yamaha and Nexo equipment, providing the venue with one of the most flexible audio systems in the country.

In 2006, the 45-year-old listed Aula auditorium at the Kantonsshule high school was closed, due to its increasingly dilapidated state. But the school was not prepared for the 500-capacity venue to stay that way - especially as its 22-register, 1560-pipe organ makes it unique amongst similar Swiss performance spaces.

A 2.9 million Swiss Franc refurbishment project was completed in just over a year, restoring and improving every facet of Aula's infrastructure. Supplied by Zap Audio and installed by AV specialists Supravision AG, the heart of the system is a Yamaha DME24N digital mix engine with three DME8i-ES eight input satellite units and a DME8o-ES eight output satellite.

An LS9-32 digital mixing console with three AuviTran EtherSound cards is integrated with the system for live events, with a CP4SF wall-mounted control panel installed for controlling the DME system's programmed presets. The DME is used for mixing signals, including Blu-ray, CD, microphones and other audio sources, routing of signals, effects processing and output delays, plus functioning as a WAV player for an attention-getting chime.

The speaker system is a 4:1 surround system, comprising four Nexo Geo S1230 two-way speakers with an RS15 sub, plus two PS8 onstage monitors. They are controlled by two NXAmp4x1 surround sound controllers, complete with ES-104 EtherSound cards.

"One of the main challenges was providing a system that would be able to provide high quality sound reinforcement for a wide variety of situations, but be very flexible and easy-to-use," says Flavio Rüdy of Zap Audio. "We had to provide a human interface that everyone from a secretary with no technical knowledge could use for simple presentations, right through to an experienced live sound engineer for mixing a complex live show."

He continues: "We realised we could achieve this with the combination of the DME and LS9. The CP4SF provides very simple control of the DME24's presets for smaller events, but the LS9 can be patched seamlessly into the system when needed. Using them together with the Nexo loudspeakers meant we could deliver great audio quality, great functionality and EtherSound's limitless integration possibilities."

Aula's historic importance and listed status meant that the 21st century technical infrastructure also had to be as unobtrusive as possible. So, as well as flexibility and audio quality, using an EtherSound system offered the major advantage that the cabling infrastructure would be minimal.

(Lee Baldock)

(13 May 2009)