Amsterdam School of the Arts comprises six educational facilities offering graduate and postgraduate level courses: the Academy of Fine Art in Education, Conservatorium van Amsterdam, Netherlands Film Academy, Reinwardt Academy, Amsterdam Academy of Architecture and de Theaterschool.
The latter offers courses ranging from scenography, directing and vocal performance to production and stage management. Theaterschool's Department of Technical Theatre Arts recently purchased a Yamaha CL system to replace a previously-installed Yamaha DM1000 mixer.
Duivendrecht-based Audio Electronics Mattijsen supplied the system, which comprises a CL1 console with two Rio1608-D i/o units for Theaterschool's main performance space. Four Yamaha DXR10 loudspeakers have been installed for stage monitors, which can also be used as a PA system for events taking place elsewhere in the building.
"We believe in having neutral-sounding pre-amplifiers, giving you the freedom to colour the sound afterwards with processing further down the chain," says Theaterschool's Dave Krooshof. "We initially chose the system for Dante's ease-of-use and we already trusted the quality of the R-series units, which are installed at Amsterdam's MC Theater and which had also previously been demonstrated to us.
"Once the system was installed, we were able to do some A/B listening tests and the preamps were every bit as good as we expected."
All signals are split and also routed, via a Dante network, to the facility's recording studio.
"One effect of specifying this system was that we had to sit around the table with our IT department regarding cabling and bandwidth," says Dave. "It created a whole buzz within the team, which led to other departments now thinking of networking technology as well. It opens up a whole new range of technical and creative possibilities of which we didn't think of before, which is exactly the kind of thing that we want to offer our students.
"Currently we are thinking of hooking up multiple rooms in the same building to the Dante network, as we have a mixture of copper and fibre connections throughout it. But we also have multiple fibre connections to the conservatorium and dance theatre located a couple of hundred metres down the street. We just have to patch those into our Dante system to open up many new possibilities."
(Jim Evans)
