To ensure the demonstrators, who had travelled from all over Bavaria to attend the event, were able to hear the speeches without any difficulty, the organizers engaged the team from Barowski AG to handle the sound reinforcement.
"Originally, the DGB organisers were expecting some 15,000 people to attend the rally, but two days before the event was due to take place, they upped the estimate to 30,000," sayss Barowski AG supremo Michael Barowski. "This posed an enormous challenge not only to the organisers themselves but also to us as sound reinforcement providers, since the topography of the venue was far from conducive to homogeneous coverage and intelligibility."
To provide even coverage for the 10,000sq.m venue, the sound reinforcement team opted primarily for compact line array systems from the Electro-Voice XLD range. The main PA was made up of 32 XLD281 enclosures, underpinned by six Xsub subwoofers and four ZX1 loudspeakers. In all, four delay lines were needed to reach the areas furthest removed from the stage: the first two comprised four Xi-2123A/106F cabinets, whilst delay lines three and four -- the latter being 260m from the stage -- were served by two Dynacod Cobra Fars and four Dynacord Cobra Tops. The entire system was driven by 14 Electro-Voice CP3000S and eight Electro-Voice CP4000S power amplifiers.
"The organisers were extremely pleased with our production," reports Michael Barowski, "praising in particular our swift response to the upscaling of the attendance estimates, our flawless execution of the sound reinforcement concept, the evenness of the coverage, and the excellent level of intelligibility."
(Jim Evans)
