London’s Leicester Square gets versatile sound for theatre

• Case Studies

Ecler, a Spanish manufacturer of audio products, has won a contract to supply an audio solution to London’s Leicester Square Theatre. The brand is distributed in the UK by MilTec (UK) Ltd.

The sound installation was designed and specified by Worcester-based Total Audio’s Peter Knowles. He explains: “The theatre wanted an intimate feel with a sound brief that could cope with a number of different set ups. The Ecler specification won through against the other quotes, on cost and in demonstration. The products are really well specified, which makes Ecler a very cost-effective solution.”

To service the 390-capacity main auditorium the sound system is based around a front of house configuration with two delay rows. Knowles adds: “What we didn’t want to do was generate higher levels of sound at the front as, with quite low ceilings, the audience would struggle to hear clearly. There’s a lot of comedy at the venue, and with the acts they book, there’s a lot of laughter, so we made the right choices with the system.”

The front of house system is comprised of four Ecler UMA112 single 12” horn-driven cabinets, supported by two UMA118 single 18” subwoofers driven by a combination of DPA1000 and DPA1400 DSP-enabled amplifiers. This unique FOH set-up was chosen for its ability to provide clear and natural reproduction of musical and speech programmes.

Two delay stacks, featuring ten Ecler AMBIT 106 loudspeakers, are controlled by Ecler’s AMIC software, utilised through the AMIC card slotted into the Ecler DPA amplifiers and powered by four Ecler MPA-R series multi-channel amplification systems.

Beneath the main auditorium, the smaller, 50-capacity performance space is reinforced with two Ecler Dacord 208H speakers through a single MPA series multi-channel amplifier. An Ecler Compact 8 rack mixer, with processing from an Ecler EDRIVE600 dsp audio processor, controls the system – allowing a large number of microphone and stereo signals.

Knowles concluded: “The Ecler solution, as ever, was a great success. The products are so well thought out and the specification, particularly of the Ambic range, with the audio processor included within the speaker cabinet, makes a very cost effective solution when you need to programme a lot of zones.”