Vienna, Austria (November 28, 2017)—The Burgtheater—the Austrian National Theatre—recently upgraded its audio systems, adding two SSL System T networked production systems along with a building-wide, redundant Dante Audio-over-IP network and SSL Network I/O.
It’s a busy venue, according to David Müllner, manager, Sound & Multimedia at the Burgtheater, who spec’d the system. “As a repertory company, there is a different production on every day during our ten-month season. Those are chosen from a rolling repertoire of around 40 productions that include traditional drama and contemporary plays. We put on around 20 premieres during the year, all produced by us.”
The venue’s previous digital console, which was the better part of 20 years old, was able to handle 256 possible inputs and 256 possible outputs, so Müllner was looking match if not surpass that. Ultimately, that led him to the System T, he noted, because it was “a larger system with similar workflow to the SSL Live console, and based on the same core Tempest Engine, but with networked audio engine and control surfaces, and a huge capacity of 800 fully-processed audio paths.”
The desk also offered Dante compatibility, which was a ‘make or break’ for Müllner: “With Dante, it’s possible to have as many inputs and outputs on the network as you want… It gives me the freedom to develop an open-ended system so if we ever need more inputs and outputs, or a different monitoring solution, for example, I can plug anything in that speaks Dante… Almost every device coming on to the market now is Dante compatible, or has a Dante option available.”
With the new system in place, the Burgtheater currently has five SSL Network I/O SB 32.24 Dante Stageboxes (each with 32 mic/line inputs, 16 analogue line outputs and 8 digital inputs and outputs), four SSL SB i16s (16 mic/line inputs), and some additional output units from other manufacturers. The system latency across the whole network has been set at 1 mS. There are actually two separate System Ts, on the same network. The main system consists of two redundant Tempest Engines, a 32-fader S500 control surface permanently installed in the control room on the first floor, and two T-SOLSA PC-based online and offline control systems, one with its own Fader Tile. The second system has a single Tempest Engine and a ‘mobile’ 32-fader S500 control surface that can be deployed anywhere in the Burgtheater.
The system was supplied by TSAMM Professional Audio Solutions, and installed by Klangfarbe GmbH.
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