Helsingborgs Stadsteater
goes digital with EtherSound

Photo: courtesy of Digigram.

Audio Product Stories Published: 14 January 2008
Helsingborgs Stadsteater is one of the most well-known city theatres in Sweden. Located at a well-placed geographical link between Sweden and Denmark, Helsingborg has a proud theatre tradition that first came to fame under the tutelage of one of Sweden’s most famous sons, Ingmar Bergman, the celebrated film, stage and opera director. The summer of 2007 saw the theatre’s main stage undergo major refurbishments including an upgrade of the audio cabling network around the stage to allow for digital audio distribution over EtherSound.

According to sound engineer, Per Wennling, the benefits of a digital network are appreciable, not least in terms of dramatically reduced installation costs in comparison with a traditional analogue solution. “A large scale CAT6 network cable installation was already planned, so adding a bit more cable for audio use was easy,” explained Per. “We opted for audio distribution over EtherSound because of its extremely low latency, excellent sound quality and because it is compatible with equipment from a large number of reputable manufacturers, so we can be flexible in how we build our system.”

In this instance, a Yamaha DME64N digital mix engine was selected as system controller, while the mixing console is connected directly to the EtherSound network using an AuviTran AVY16-ES card. Two Digigram ES8out devices are handling D/A conversion, chosen for both their simplicity and cost-effectiveness. “Combined with the old analogue cable system that we kept, this has resulted in a very flexible solution,” noted Per. “One of the biggest benefits is the fact that we can move a mixing console or a stage box very easily now, because we only have one CAT6 cable to deal with rather than heavy multicores. That’s a great advantage when you are using the same stage for several events while two or more theatre productions are in progress. And the sound quality remains excellent throughout.”