The Humboldt Forum in Berlin installs an audio over IP infrastructure with Lawo

The historic German city palace now features three state-of-the-art mc²56 production consoles and eleven Dallis I/O systems from the manufacturer.

Based in the rebuilt Royal Palace of Berlin, located on the Spree Island, he Humboldt Forum houses museums, places for events, spaces for exhibitions and facilities for cultural education in this German city. Although the façade is a partial replica of the palace, Its interior is a new building, designed by Italian architect Franco Stella, equipped with state-of-the-art technology supplied by Theirs.

The systems integrator Digitech has been responsible for the installation of the IP-based audio infrastructure, networked through a Lawo Nova73 HD matrix, located in the center. Designed to be flexible and scalable, It has three state-of-the-art mc²56 production consoles and eleven Dallis I/O systems from this manufacturer.

All areas for events and sound art projects are connected through stage boxes of, each of them equipped to respond to the requirements of their respective facilities. Signal transfer throughout the building is carried out through the central matrix.

The main rooms of the Humboldt Forum are equipped with audio technology. Includes two live event rooms, of 500 m² y 461 m², a main lobby and several seminar rooms. The so-called patio Schlüterhof, the passage and other areas are used for outdoor events and activities, que suelen alquilarse por grupos de interés, like the City Museum Foundation (Foundation of the City Museum); the Humboldt Forum Foundation; go State Museums in Berlin (Berlin State Museums), and the Humboldt University of Berlin.

Each of the two rooms houses another control room, equipped with a mc²56 mixing console (Mukiiii), of 32 y 48 faders, respectively, as well as other common central equipment, whose connection panel connects to the stage boxes that are distributed throughout the facilities for events and visitors, all with audio interfaces, video, conference and control technology.

The so-called Sound workshop (sound workshop), managed by the National Museums of Berlin, is responsible for the important job of maintaining the Lautarchiv, a collection of historical sound recordings.

This famous file, one of the first institutions of its kind in Europe, contains a collection of about 7.500 shellac discs, wax cylinders and audio tapes with historical recordings, some with more than 120 years old, offering visitors and researchers invaluable phonetic and linguistic insight into the era of the German Empire and the Weimar Republic.

In addition to the technical installations for the restoration of acoustic sources, The sound workshop has a recording studio, which has a third Lawo mc²56 console, con 48 faders, offering up to six hundred fully equipped broadcast DSP channels and routing capacity of up to 5,120x5,120 mono channels.

Birger Gross, head of audio and video engineering at the Humboldt Forum, explains that “the wide range of events expected in the future, both in terms of space and artistic-technical character, and the network links between them tipped the balance in favor of Lawo's system.".

The mc²56 production console, recognized mainly in the broadcast sector and now also in large and small theaters, including opera, “It was fundamental in several fields. In addition to its performance and flexibility, offers intuitive work on the surface itself, including DSP management and measurement and monitoring functions, as well as remote capability via the mxGUI. Your connection capacity, via Crestron control, “It allows you to conduct and control simpler events with practically no specialized personnel.”, points out.

The eleven Dallis racks are distributed throughout the building and installed in the respective headquarters, so the signal paths to the microphone sources are kept short.

“As technical operators - continues Gross– We are glad that the signals from the various venues are also available for all other consoles via the router, and the security of the issue is maintained by the configured rights system. This mutual exchange of signals between all headquarters, backed by Lawo's own redundancy, "Greatly increases creative possibilities.".

In addition to the main sound system of Kling&Freitag, the room 2 It is equipped with a Vivace reverb system, con 62 Freestanding speakers on walls and ceiling, and the room 1 Features twelve additional in-wall speakers.

This flexibility and, concretely, The large number of additional speakers that can be controlled directly by the Lawo system will also be used by Instrument, an artificial intelligence-based composition platform.

Specifically, This technology accesses the sound file and 'composes' it by evaluating ethnological parameters, geographical and music theorists. As this instrument develops it will also include live recordings of the audience, which will allow reacting very spontaneously to include 'call and response' sound events throughout the installation.