Austrian National Theatre upgrades with SSL systems
- Details
As part of a recent upgrade to its audio systems, the theatre has installed two SSL System T networked production systems along with a building-wide, redundant Dante Audio-over-IP network and SSL Network I/O. The system was specified by David Müllner (manager, sound & multimedia, Burgtheater), supplied by TSAMM Professional Audio Solutions, and installed by Klangfarbe GmbH.
Müllner started researching consoles back in 2012, looking for emerging technologies, technology trends, and workflows that might suit the theatre’s needs. The Burgtheater was an early investor in digital audio, and its previous digital console was nearly 18 years old by the time it was replaced, so the new system would have a long legacy to live up to. "As a repertory company, there is a different production on every day during our 10-month season," explains Müllner. "Those are chosen from a rolling repertoire of around 40 productions that include traditional drama and contemporary plays. We put on around 20 premieres during the year, all produced by us."
Müllner was especially interested in the SSL Live console range when it was released and says that, from a workflow perspective, he was "hooked immediately," though was ideally looking for higher path counts, and separation of control surfaces and audio engines. "I then found out about System T - a larger system with similar workflow to the live console, and based on the same core Tempest Engine, but with networked audio engine and control surfaces, and a huge capacity of 800 fully-processed audio paths."
For I/O, Dante had already made a big impact with Müllner, and so the native Dante capabilities of System T were another exciting prospect. "20 years ago, the old digital system already had 256 possible inputs and 256 possible outputs. We had decided that any new system should be at least capable of that. Of course, with Dante it's possible to have as many inputs and outputs on the network as you want... It gives me the freedom to develop an open-ended system so if we ever need more inputs and outputs, or a different monitoring solution, for example, I can plug anything in that speaks Dante... Almost every device coming on to the market now is Dante compatible, or has a Dante option available."
The Burgtheater currently has five SSL Network I/O SB 32.24 Dante Stageboxes (each with 32 mic/line inputs, 16 analogue line outputs and eight digital inputs and outputs), four SSL SB i16s (16 mic/line inputs), and some additional output units from other manufacturers. The system latency across the whole network has been set at 1mS.
There are actually two separate System Ts, on the same network. The main system consists of two redundant Tempest Engines, a 32-fader S500 control surface permanently installed in the control room on the 1st floor, and two T-SOLSA PC-based online and offline control systems - one with its own Fader Tile. The second system has a single Tempest Engine and a 'mobile' 32-fader S500 control surface that can be deployed anywhere in the Burgtheater.
(Jim Evans)
