Muscdata, exclusive distributor in the Czech Republic for the Innovason brand, selected cable from German cable manufacturer, Sommer Cable as the backbone of the system with an AVM500-ES EtherSound network matrix from Auvitran which enabled star as well as daisy-chain connections. The AVM500 is connected to the control room via optical fibre.
The result is a completely flexible network which enables high quality audio signal transfer from seven different locations. Sound technicians are able to move any of the Innovason SR-16 16-in/16-out stage boxes to any of the connection points to cater quickly and easily to the demands of any given production.
In addition to the Eclipse GT, the control room has also been equipped with two computers loaded with recording and playback software. These are using the Auvitran AV3rd EtherSound/ASIO bridge. The recording studio workstation in the control room has a direct connection to the network and has the ability to record sound from anywhere on stage or even from ambient microphones in the auditorium.
The studio can also add streams to the network, thus to the Eclipse - itself capable of recording up to 64 channels of high quality digital audio - or directly to the monitored lines, or even to the PA system. The final mix from the Eclipse is also sent directly to the PA system in AES/EBU format.
"This is the most complex EtherSound system we have ever installed," commented Musicdata MD, Tomas Ourednicek. "Working in an historical listed building like this beautiful theatre is never easy - in fact, it was very difficult indeed, but we still ended up running over 870m of Cat 5 cable and 70m of optical fibre. Furthermore, the whole network is completely scalable and therefore ready for any future expansion. We put our long experience of working with EtherSound and Innovason to very good use in this installation, and I am pleased to report that everything works absolutely perfectly."
(Jim Evans)
