The monastery of St. Gallen is one of the few concert venues in Switzerland where the orchestra is positioned in an enclosed booth backstage, so sound has to be reinforced one hundred percent towards the audience. To pull off such a feat it is essential to have excellent sound quality, on a par with the carefully controlled acoustics in an auditorium.
M&M Hire AG, together with Habegger AG, the contractor, and Daniel Meyer from 2M Audio, d&b audiotechnik's distributor in Switzerland, provided sound engineering and acoustics expertise at the open-air festival for the fourth time in a row.
Countless loudspeaker systems were installed in, on, in front of and behind the stage to fill the open air with the refined atmosphere of a real concert hall.
Apart from flying a d&b J-Series line array, 11 per side as the main system, several T10s were used in horizontal point-source mode for front-fills; Q7 loudspeakers were positioned throughout the listening area for sound effects to replicate the acoustics and atmosphere of a virtual auditorium.
For the first time at the St. Gallen Festival they were able to integrate C4 loudspeakers into the actual stage design making it possible to pinpoint the sound of the artists on the stage using positional sound delay techniques. Andreas Baumann, project director, said: "Linking up everything through the d&b Remote network made it easy to handle the system which saved us loads of time."
Frank Sattler, head of sound at the St. Gallen Theatre was impressed: "The entire system sounds absolutely natural and it works brilliantly, without having to make adjustments."
(Jim Evans)
