Germany - The world premiere of The World of Hans Zimmer - An Immersive Symphony: The Theatre Experience took the audience at the Metronom Theater in Oberhausen on an impressive musical journey through the works of the film composer.
Presented by Semmel Concerts and accompanied by lighting, sound and stage technology from Satis & Fy, this hit show delighted more than 22,000 fans at 15 sold-out concerts from 23 January to 2 March. Hans Zimmer himself spoke to the audience in the form of a larger-than-life, three-dimensional projected image.
Behind the scenes, monitor engineer Thorben Ströhlein and RF manager Werner Schmidl also welcomed a special technical guest: Sennheiser’s Spectera, which they used to provide some of the musicians with in-ear and line/mic signals as part of the Spectera Pioneer Program.
Contact with the Pioneer Program was brought about by Holger Schwark, who was the FOH engineer and, together with Colin Pink and Christian Steinhäuser, was also the sound designer for this music production curated by Hans Zimmer.
This led to Per Witte from Sennheiser bringing a Spectera Base Station and a dozen bidirectional 1.4 GHz bodypacks along to the rehearsals in Oberhausen in January – together with a technical introduction into the system provided by Gerhard Spyra, technical application engineer.
Monitor engineer Ströhlein comments: “You could say, perhaps, that we were thrown in at the deep end because we didn’t have all that much time to prepare. But actually it wasn’t a problem at all, because the system was relatively easy to set up.”
One notable feature of this Spectera test was the fact that it was Werner Schmidl’s first ever job as RF manager. “I’m normally responsible for the FOH system, which is something I did for Peter Maffay, for example, for many years. Of course, during my career I also had to take care of wireless systems now and again. But this is actually my very first major assignment as RF manager. At the venue, I scanned the RF environment using a Spectera antenna and finding the frequencies was no problem at all. It’s all very easy!”
“And that’s also true of the bodypacks: it’s all very user-friendly,” Ströhlein adds. “Just put the batteries in and off you go!” The four DAD antennas were placed directly at the LED curtains that gave the stage an immersive spatiality and drew both the musicians and the audience into fascinating worlds of light and video.
Schmidl and Ströhlein had first considered using Spectera only as an in-ear system. “But then we thought: why not make use of the bidirectional feature? After all, that’s one of the greatest advantages you can have,” Ströhlein explains.
So Schmidl went on to equip violinist Alexandra Tirsu, bass player Malte Winter, guitarist Julien Castanié and woodwind player Saulius Petreikis with Spectera beltpacks for both in-ear monitoring and line/mic signals. The IEM-only function was used by Ströhlein and by vocalists Carla Chamoun and Futurelove Sibanda, as well as by percussionists Mareike Eidemüller and Benjamin Leuschner, Andreas Kurth on drums, and Christoph Bönecker, the keyboards player, accordionist and musical director of the production. Overall, Ströhlein handled a total of 22 monitor mixes.
Schmidl set up the packs using the Spectera WebUI: “I was really pleased about this because I was able to use my iPad. And not only that, it also eliminates the risk of malfunctions after computer updates.”
The in-ear transmission performance of the bidirectional Spectera beltpacks immediately impressed those who had previously only been accustomed to using analogue in-ear systems. Thorben Ströhlein: “There's no noise, it all sounds amazingly good and the sound is incredibly wide on the headphones. The microphone signal is also very good. Everything sounds just as it should.”
Schmidl and Ströhlein were also able to provide the Sennheiser team with valuable feedback to assist the further development of the Spectera ecosystem, for example with regard to the endless rotary volume control, the WebUI and their desire for a cue function. “Feedback like this is hugely important for us and enables us to further perfect the system – which works really well via firmware updates,” Witte explains. “This is precisely what the Pioneer Program was created for, and we are very grateful to the team for their honest feedback.”
As this was a test run, the Spectera production team had a full back-up system available in the background. But they never needed to use it, and they stayed with Spectera for all of the shows. Ströhlein adds: “With analogue systems, I have a lot more dropouts, but Spectera made the production much easier. Situations like ‘every time I turn my head there’s noise’ just don’t occur anymore. Once the green light is on, I know that everything is functioning properly. You can work much better like that.”
