The theatre presents a variety of productions, from rock 'n roll to ballet, drama, corporate events, film and opera as well as numerous UCL student productions. However it is perhaps most well-known as a comedy venue, one which has seen performances by Jo Brand, Mel And Sue, Eddie Izzard, Lily Savage, and John Shuttleworth among many others.
More recently comedy A-Listers Jimmy Carr, Ricky Gervais and Harry Hill have recorded shows there for DVD release. With almost 550 seats and with completely unobstructed views of the stage throughout the house, it manages to pull off the difficult trick of combining intimacy with the atmosphere that is only generated by a certain audience size.
Following their success in a competitive tender process, Autograph Sales & Installations were recently tasked with replacing the existing loudspeaker systems with an integrated design capable of handling all the theatre's many and complex demands. Autograph's system designer and engineer Peppe Mallozzi explains how their EM Acoustics Halo-Compact solution brought the house down:
"The challenge at the Bloomsbury was to design a system with both the power and finesse to handle everything from proper rock 'n roll acts through to intimate single-performer productions. The key is consistency of coverage so that the whole experience can be delivered evenly to every seat in the house and this dictated not only our choice of products but also the eventual system design.
"Along with other suppliers we were invited to conduct a demonstration of our proposal at the theatre. Although ours was neither the cheapest nor the most compact solution, the pure quality of the audio it produced won the job for us - in fact the technical manager was - in his own words - 'blown away' by what he heard."
"Having specified and installed it in some similar locations with great results, we knew that the new EM Acoustics Halo-C compact line-array was ideal for this project. It also ticked a major box for the client who specified a passive, non-self-powered system - they additionally specified that it should be controlled via an external interface that would be familiar to visiting engineers, which is why we chose the industry-standard XTA DP448 processor.
"Our design uses five EM Acoustics Halo-C enclosures flown as a central cluster with a further four per side covering the stalls and two EMS 118s subwoofers on the floor for the main PA. Six EMS 81X modules are used as stage side-fills and balcony fills, while four EMS 61s are deployed as front fills and we also supplied eight EM-M10s for use as stage monitors. Incidentally, ours was the only design that did not include dedicated delay speakers - we knew from the size of the room and our experience with HALO-C that they would not be necessary at the Bloomsbury, and indeed they were not as the main PA covers the room with ease."
"A critical link in the audio chain was our choice of Lab-Gruppen power amplifiers, which are a perfect match for the EM Acoustics products and whose audio quality plays a major part in the final results. Thanks to the power and flexibility of their FP-series we needed only four amplifiers to drive the entire FOH system - two FP10000Qs for the three hangs of Halo-C, one FP6000Q for the side-fills and balcony fills and one FP4000Q for the front-fills. The eight EM-M10 monitors are powered by four Lab IPD2400s with sophisticated onboard DSP so no external processing is required for the on-stage system."
The theatre's technical manager Syd Funnell said, "Giving all our clients the best quality audio has frequently been a challenge for us. Having such a varied programme has pushed our audio system to its operational limits and we always had issues getting decent sou
