NEXUS as FOH matrix at Classic Open Air Festival

posted:

12/07/2018

The Classic Open Air Festival at the Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin has been a good tradition for 27 years. But making it happen presents a new challenge every year. Classical music in the open air is demanding in terms of acoustics and requires a special sound reinforcement system. The critical audience is accustomed to perfect concert hall sound. This year, for the first time Berlin-based manufacturer Stage Tec also contributed to ensuring the audience could enjoy the five festival concert evenings in the finest audio quality.

A NEXUS system was used as the FOH matrix and routed the output signals from two mixing consoles to the PA system. The gain-delay matrix of the DSP board performed signal processing within the NEXUS system. The level delay matrix employed enables simultaneous distribution of input signals to multiple outputs. Here, gain and delay could be set individually for each input per output bus. The outputs of the gain-delay matrix were used to control different sound reinforcement zones at the Gendarmenmarkt and the individual mixes were output to the sound reinforcement system via dynamics units (limiters) over Dante. This achieved a uniform level across the wide Gendarmenmarkt square, allowing the audience to experience the five concerts with the best sound.

Laptop with gain-delay matrix, multimetering, routing and parameter at the Classic Open Air Festival in Berlin

NEXUS Base Device with boards at the Classic Open Air Festival in Berlin

“The modularity, system stability and mechanical construction of the Base Device convinced me. When operating via the Nexus GUI, we noticed a positive feature. Several routings could be prepared in advance," explains Ben Spindler, freelance sound reinforcement specialist. “Afterwards they could be switched without clicks. Using states saved previously, I could quickly switch between two scenarios (zone and stereo sound).”

Classic Open Air Festival in Berlin

Event equipment and service provider TSE AG (Technik und Service für Events AG) used NEXUS as the FOH matrix on this project. NEXUS was able to demonstrate that its variety of analogue and digital interfaces, DSP functionality and low-latency networking make it the go-to solution for all types of sound reinforcement tasks. This year the Classic Open Air Festival took place from 05th - 09th July.

About Stage Tec:
Stage Tec Entwicklungsgesellschaft für professionelle Audiotechnik GmbH (Research and Development Company for professional audio technology), based in Berlin, Germany, specialises in the development and manufacture of innovative audio equipment. Stage Tec has an international reputation as one of the leading pioneers in the transition from analogue to digital audio technology. NEXUS® won the Technology and Engineering Emmy® Award in 2010 as “the finest, most versatile audio routing system available today”. Key products include the AURUS® direct access console (2002), the compact AURATUS® (2006) and CRESCENDO (2009) consoles for broadcast and theatre, and the ON AIR flex broadcast mixer (2014). The AVATUS IP-based console will be launched in 2019 and picks up on the trend towards IP networking in the audio industry.