Holstenhalle Neumünster is used for a wide variety of events, from classical concerts, trade shows, livestock auctions, pop concerts and parties to other attractions including motorcycle shows. This year, the venue's technical director, Walter Rudat, decided to call it a day for the venue's 15-year old 100v line horn-loaded PA system and called in technical consultant Rüdiger Aue from ASC to design a new house rig for the challenging acoustics of the Holstenhalle.
Having worked in the venue on the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Aue was familiar with its characteristics. The Holstenhalle is aircraft-hangar measuring 90m long, 25m wide and 13m high with an arched ceiling, plastic seating, hard/reflective surfaces resulting in an RT60 measurement of between 3.5 - 2 seconds (depending on octave-band) and discreet reflections and echoes.
Rüdiger Aue drew up a system design based on Nexo's GEO S loudspeakers. With the support of Nexo's Germany distributor Camco, a demo system consisting of 13 GEO S805 cabinets and a single GEO S830 was set up to cover the northern half of the hangar. The results were promising and confirmed the measurements predicted by GeoSoft. Nexo GEO S was the only compact line array system that matched the specification, in terms of sound quality, achievable SPL, size, weight, flexibility and cost-effectiveness, say Amptown.
In the finished installation, a cluster consisting of two GEO S hangs has been positioned in the middle of the hall pointing north and south, each hang containing 13 GEO S805s and a single S830 cabinet. Two further S805s are positioned at right angles to cover five rows of seats underneath the control booths, while a bass array is set right in the middle, with three CD-12 sub-bass cabinets pointing in each direction. GEO S EASE V4 dlls was used to forecast the system performance.
(Lee Baldock)
