The most recent edition of NUEJAZZ, an international jazz festival established in 2013 that’s held annually at the Nuremberg (Germany) Z-Bau venue in welcoming up-and-coming jazz artists as well as those from pop, rock, electro and world music genres, was again supported by permanently installed sound reinforcement systems at the facility that incorporate a variety of CODA Audio loudspeakers.
“The sound performance is spot on and the systems are enormously flexible,” says Christopher König, technical manager of Z-Bau. “We cover a wide range at the Z-Bau — from rock, jazz and hip-hop to classical music and conferences, where the best possible speech intelligibility is essential. Our CODA Audio systems always deliver a consistent audio experience.”
The Red Salon and Gallery stages at the venue were the first to utilize systems headed by CODA Audio in 2015, specifically equipped with RX40, G712 and HOPS8 loudspeakers complemented by U4 and G18 subwoofers installed by by Andy Zeh and Tobias Förster of Munich-based company into>noise.
Two years later, the duo returned to address the 1,000-capacity Great Hall, deploying ViRAY arrays and SCP sensor-controlled subs as mains joined by HOPS8 as nearfills and TiRAY for center delay lines. Meanwhile, the stage was outfitted with CUE-TWO stage monitors and G18 subs for drum and sidefill.
Front of house engineer Dominik “Domi” Back, who was at the console in the Great Hall for performances by Seed and Melanie Charles in the festival’s latest iteration, says, “As an engineer, you have to work with the tools that are in front of you, so when it’s a system like ViRAY, you really appreciate it! It’s easy to use, it sounds balanced and the low end is easy to control.
“With a different system, things could have been critical,” he continues, talking about Charles’ performance. “I had to make the vocal quite loud, and on top of that, the artist switches to playing the flute in between, so there was a great danger of feedback. But everything went flawlessly and we didn’t have a single problem. I also noted that you don’t have to push the controls far to get a punchy, transparent sound from ViRAY, even at relatively low volumes you get a rich sound quality from the system. That’s what excited me.”
NUEJAZZ artistic director Frank Wuppinger concludes, “We only got positive feedback from the event. Several of the acts were so enthusiastic about playing and so taken with the audience that they said afterwards that it was it their best gig ever. For the audiences at the Z-Bau, the concerts were once again a pleasure in terms of sound — powerful and punchy but at all times so transparent that you could hear all the subtleties.”
