Rialto Theatre completes Alcons installation
- Details
Since 1996 the restored Rialto has thrived as a combined movie house, live arts venue, and community centre. When the city-owned venue’s sound reinforcement system was updated three years ago, it was a challenge to find a system which could deliver powerful, high-quality sound in a space with a lot of hard, flat surfaces. Not only that, but it now hosted a much broader range of events than the venue was designed for.
The solution was an Alcons system comprising eight 6.5” LR7/90 micro line array modules per side, two SR9 double 5” micro monitors as front-fills, all powered and controlled by Sentinel amplified loudspeaker controllers. This transformed the quality and detail of the sound for all the Rialto’s events from physically small arrays. Budget constraints meant that the subwoofers could not be updated at the time and, in a subsequent upgrade, a pair of Alcons Cinemarray CRA24 double 12” medium format, line source loudspeakers were as a centre screen channel for movie shows and center cluster for other productions.
Now, in the third phase, the replacement of the original subwoofers with three double 18” Alcons BF362iMkII high output subwoofers and a further 4x2500w Sentinel10 amplified loudspeaker controller has seen the Rialto enjoy all the benefits of a complete, fully-integrated Alcons system.
“The existing subwoofers were underperforming,” says Phil Baugh, the Rialto Theatre’s technical coordinator. “The LR7 pro-ribbon arrays, Cinemarray and SR9s all sounded beautiful and clear, so it was time to provide low end reinforcement which matched the quality and power of the rest of the Alcons system. Importantly, we needed a solution to deliver powerful bass frequencies to the entire theatre without them building up in the corners, along the walls or spilling onto the stage.”
