Royal Albert Hall swaps in d&b cardioid arrays

The Royal Albert Hall in London has upgraded its in-house sound system with the latest cardioid technology from d&b audiotechnik. The hall has used the German manufacturer's speakers since 2019, when an upgrade put in more than 400 loudspeakers.

The new installation draws on more than 140 new loudspeaker elements. It keeps most of the 2018 positions and infrastructure and adds equipment only where it improves coverage and capability.

What went in

The main left and right hangs are 12-deep KSL arrays. XSL arrays cover out-fills and choir positions, and also form two entirely new central hangs meant for Soundscape use. Low end comes from a reconfigured central hang of SL-SUBs and new XSL-SUBs on the ground.

CCL arrays serve as circle delays across the 5,272-capacity auditorium. 42S speakers are now discrete front-fills, particularly for orchestral shows, replacing the 16C column speakers used before. The boxes and gallery speakers are largely unchanged, with 4S speakers adding delays and some depth to the boxes.

New 40D install amplifiers drive the left, centre, right and Soundscape hangs. New D90 amplifiers feed the flown subs, and the rest of the system keeps its D80, 30D, 10D and 5D amplifiers.

Soundscape

The 2018 upgrade added d&b Soundscape capability. Using it previously meant extra loudspeaker hire, cabling, amplifiers and labour. The permanent, flown XSL hangs dedicated to Soundscape remove that setup. The hall has also gone from two DS100 processors to three DS110 units, one of them for redundancy, which raises output capacity and system resolution.

Richard Sally-Lower, the hall's audio operations manager, says the new system is mostly like-for-like with newer technology. "We've gone a little bit bigger to cater for the larger shows – but the key improvement is the cardioid aspect," he says. He adds that touring productions increasingly ask for Soundscape, and the hall uses it for its own productions, such as the seasonal run of shows in December.

Steve Jones of d&b's education and application support team for EMEA oversaw the designs of both the 2018 and 2026 upgrades. With the cardioid addition, he says, pretty much all of the energy in the room points at the audience and is absorbed by them. In 2026, he says, almost every point installed in 2018 is used without changing the infrastructure.

Source: AV Magazine