TiMax has assured intelligible immersive audio on Germany’s oldest outdoor stage at the Wundsiedel’s Luisenburg Festspiele.
Central Europe’s outdoor performance tradition determinedly eschews standard staging formats, seeking instead the most picturesque yet challenging environments to deliver their tales to audiences in their thousands. Set in a rock labyrinth with certain upstage scene elements offset at heights up to 25m above the main stage area, Wundsiedel’s Luisenburg Festspiele, on Germany’s oldest outdoor stage, turned to TiMax SoundHub to create intelligible immersive audio for every seat in the 2000-strong audience, via sophisticated object-based soundscapes rendered by the platform’s dynamic delay-matrix processing.
System-Sound Designer, David Horn, maintains four TiMax SoundHub showcontrol systems at his disposal, but used a single 64-channel unit activated for real-time vocal localisation driven by a new TiMax TrackerD4, recently purchased from the TiMax German Distributor, Pro-Audio Technik.
Eight TiMax Tracker sensors, some mounted on trees and even rocks, covered the huge 38 metre-wide and 25 metres deep performance area, complete with one section of stage that rises into the hillside to a height of 25 metres. The system captured every movement from 24 TiMax Tracker UWB RF Tags worn by the performers moving through the space.
TiMax was primarily deployed to enhance vocal intelligibility but was also used to distribute the audio within the space for spot effects. The loudspeaker system distributed under the canopy in front of the hillside stage comprised main line array systems with a total of six high Q80 speakers, complementing two centre array hangs each with three high Q40 units all from local German manufacturer, Ritterbusch Audio. Also supplied were eight B-18 sub bass units with four B-15 centrally placed subs, eight T6 for near fill and 16 LDK81 line array modules providing audience delay reinforcement. Weatherproofed Bose 802 speakers were place at three locations on the upstage hillside, acting as localisation anchors for these distant performance areas. TiMax and the Yamaha PM5 Rivage main console were all hooked up via Dante.