Historic Czech theatre upgrades with Innovason Eclipse GT and EtherSound digital network

December 2011

The J.K. Tyl theatre in the Czech Republic city of Plzen (Pilsen) is one of the city’s most historic cultural landmarks. Built in 1902, the impressive building honours the city’s outstanding theatre tradition, which is second only to that of the capital, Prague. The theatre has recently benefitted from a significant audio system upgrade which has seen the installation of a brand new Eclipse GT digital mixing console and a sophisticated EtherSound digital audio network.

MUSICDATA, exclusive distributor for the Innovason brand in the Czech Republic, selected cable from German cable manufacturer, Sommer Cable as the backbone of the system with an AVM500-ES EtherSound network matrix from Auvitran which enabled star as well as daisy-chain connections. The AVM500 is connected to the control room via optical fibre. The result is a completely flexible network which enables high quality audio signal transfer from seven different locations. Sound technicians are able to move any of the Innovason SR-16 16-in/16-out stage boxes to any of the connection points to cater quickly and easily to the demands of any given production. 

In addition to the Eclipse GT, the control room has also been equipped with two computers loaded with recording and playback software. These are using the Auvitran AV3rd EtherSound/ASIO bridge.The recording studio workstation in the control room has a direct connection to the network and has the ability to record sound from anywhere on stage or even from ambient microphones in the auditorium. The studio can also add streams to the network, thus to the Eclipse – itself capable of recording up to 64 channels of high quality digital audio – or directly to the monitored lines, or even to the PA system. The final mix from the Eclipse is also sent directly to the PA system in AES/EBU format.

"This is the most complex EtherSound system we have ever installed," commented MUSICDATA MD, Tomas Ourednicek. "Working in an historical listed building like this beautiful theatre is never easy – in fact, it was very difficult indeed, but we still ended up running over 870m of CAT5 cable and 70m of optical fibre! Furthermore, the whole network is completely scalable and therefore ready for any future expansion. We put our long experience of working with EtherSound and Innovason to very good use in this installation, and I am pleased to report that everything works absolutely perfectly!"

Petr Solc, the theatre’s sound director is equally pleased, especially with the desk. "The new Eclipse GT console is well laid out with direct access to 60 inputs and allows for a mix of up to 104 inputs, which means we’ll be able to handle even the most difficult performances. It’s extremely user-friendly (for example, the channel label is easily visible above the fader), it sounds fantastic, and best of all, the console can be configured entirely according to our need for each show. The fact that any fader can be anything is the biggest advantage for us. With a width of 116cm and 48 fully configurable faders (and I’m not counting the others on the Smartpanel) we don’t have to use layers; all inputs and outputs can be managed simultaneously and we still have space to lay down the script. Also, the digital patching has made our everyday workflow much easier. The new network allows us to react to and implement even the most difficult requests from our director, conductor and all the other artists."