The Opera House in Toronto, a 950-capacity live performance venue that opened in 1909 as a vaudeville and still retains classical architecture, has emerged from the haitus caused by the pandemic with a new sound reinforcement system utilizing a variety of Adamson CS-Series loudspeakers and supporting components.
The new system replaces one utilizing Adamson Y-Axis arrays that had served the venue well for two decades. “We were one of the original Y-Axis partners and that system was rock-solid for the last 20 years,” explains Athena Ellinas-Towers, own and general manger of the theatre. “When the opportunity came up to replace it with Adamson’s brand-new CS-Series, we had to go for it and I must say, it’s very impressive.”
The new main stereo array is comprised of arrays of 10 Adamson CS10 modules flown to each side of the stage, joined by arrays of six CS119 subwoofers below. Front fill is delivered by a stereo pair of CS7p loudspeakers flanking the stage and firing inwayd, while both the under and upper balcony areas have their own separate CS7p zones — three delivering 70 x 40-dispersion below the balcony and a stereo pair of 100 x 50-degree dispersion models for the upper balcony where ductwork shades the arrays.
The new system is networked using a pair of Extreme Switches and an Adamson NDS to manage the redundant network wiring scheme and analog backup. It gives the system two layers of redundancy, including primary and secondary networks from the Adamson Gateway at front of house with analog from the same source on discrete cabling to the stage. The redundant networked audio feeds are merged to a single Cat-6 cable, with analog and power run separately to the loudspeakers.
“Having the new software and Adamson Gateway at FOH has changed my life. The functionality and flexibility have opened a whole new world of possibilities to me, truly giving me the freedom to design and contour the system to fit my needs. This is a gamechanger from Adamson,” says Dan Cumming, front of house and technical director of The Opera House.
The Gateway offers a 16-channel input matrix mixer with 16 channels of DSP. It serves as the “control center” for the entire system in addition to providing an efficient way to switch between house and guest consoles. It can accept up to 16 channels of redundant Milan AVB or use eight XLR inputs to provide either 16 AES/EBU or eight analog signals. The network I/O on the has six Neutrik etherCON and two Neutrik opticalCON connectors to make it a four-port redundant switch.
“One of the main upgrades on our end was installing rigging points so we could hang the new system,” Cumming concludes. “Using Adamson’s optimization feature smoothed the response in the room dramatically. My favorite part is that it doesn’t add any latency to the system.”
