Germany - The Menschen in Europa ('People in Europe') events series has been held in Passau every year now since 1996. With its motto 'Art has no mother tongue', the event provides members of the public with an opportunity to become better acquainted with leading artists and performers. Since 1999, Menschen in Europa has been accompanied by a series of roundtable discussions in Passau's Medienhaus featuring personalities from the worlds of politics, business, culture and religion.
This year's Menschen in Europa (MiE) opening event culminated in the presentation of the MiE Award to operatic star Anna Netrebko, but prior to that the artist engaged in a roundtable discussion with the director of the Bavarian State Opera, Nikolaus Bachler, and the former director of the Vienna State Opera, Ioan Holender, moderated by the TV presenter Thomas Gottshalk, entitled Die Wa(h)re Kunst (The true/commodity art). The series concluded on the 3 December.
This was the twelfth year running that AUDYVID GmbH of Aicha vorm Wald had been charged with providing the sound reinforcement for the series. "The events are held in the atrium of the Medienhaus in Passau," explains AUDYVID managing director Jürgen Hofmann. "The atrium is some 15m high and ringed with tiered balconies. Because of the modern architecture, some 70 percent of the surface area of the atrium consists of glass, the reflective nature of which poses a severe challenge."
Despite the difficult acoustics, the very nature of these events makes it essential that a very high level of intelligibility be delivered by the sound reinforcement system. To ensure audience members throughout the atrium would be able to hear and understand what was being said, Hofmann opted for a lavish Dynacord-based solution. In addition to the main PA on the ground floor, level with the FOH position, the system included a delay line further back in the auditorium and 20 further delay loudspeakers in the balconies above.
New this year was the use of the Vertical Array system from Dynacord. "Earlier this autumn, we tested this system at an event attended by 800 people and it covered the entire audience with no problems," reports Hoffmann. "I was astonished at how far the sound from these slim and compact speakers actually carried."
In view of this positive first experience of the system in action, Hoffman decided to use it again in Passau. Here the solution included two TS 4000 Vertical Array loudspeakers and two PSD 215 active subwoofers. "This provided us with more than enough headroom in the Medienhaus," says Hoffmann. "I was already impressed by the performance of the system during the sound check the day before the series began, and as the event got underway my enthusiasm increased. We really hit the bull's-eye with the Vertical Array system."
The level of intelligibility was so high that AUDYVID was tempted to dispense with a second delay line altogether. In the end, only two Dynacord VariLine 262 loudspeakers were needed further back in the auditorium, while eight active and 12 passive 10'', two-way loudspeakers on the 20 pillars ringing the atrium provided coverage to the two higher floors.
