BTS Matches Audi’s Excellence with Meyer Sound
Sep 14, 2006 11:55 AM
The Ingolstadt, Germany, corporate headquarters of automaker Audi AG is a huge building, encompassing offices, engineering space, and a large display area for the company’s latest vehicles. Inside the building, Audi recently created a temporary auditorium roughly 30 meters wide and more than 50 meters long in which to hold a meeting of their shareholders.
With approximately 400 shareholders in attendance, presentation is key. Responsibility for the event’s audio fell to BTS GmbH, of Landsham, near Munich, as it often does for events staged by the carmaker. “Audi is our biggest and most important client,” says BTS Managing Director Thomas Randl. “We do nearly all the events for the Audi press department. They want the quality of these events to reflect the quality of their product, so we use Meyer Sound.”
Beyond the usual significance of a shareholder’s meeting, Audi raised the stakes by increasing their video requirements this time around. “This was a really huge event and very important for Audi. Besides the sound system, we did all the staging, lights, and video equipment,” Randl relates. “What made it so interesting was that this was the first Audi event done completely in high-definition television. The equipment, both sound and video, had to be of the highest quality.”
With a program dominated by spoken word and punctuated by high-resolution video footage and recorded music, intelligibility was the keynote requirement for the event, but BTS sound system designer Tobias Czoeppan knew he also needed a low-profile system that would not cause visual interference with the large video screen behind the stage. Czoeppan met both those needs by basing the system around the M1D ultracompact curvilinear array, which BTS has used successfully on other Audi events. “For most of our jobs, speech and intelligibility count the most,” Czoeppan says. “With the M1D, that is very easy to achieve, as it has a very clear sound. Also, it’s small and looks nice. For most of our jobs, that is important, too.”
Czoeppan used Meyer Sound’s MAPP Online Pro acoustical prediction program to define the system. Each of the main left and right arrays was comprised of eight M1D cabinets, topped with a single M1D-Sub ultra-compact subwoofer. A center cluster of two UPJ-1P compact VariO loudspeakers handled front-fill duties. Additional bass support was provided by two 600-HP compact high-power subwoofers, with one hidden behind the walls on each side of the stage, directly under the M1D arrays.
CP-10 complementary phase parametric equalizer provided equalization, augmented by an LD-3 compensating line driver for array compensation and system drive. Four more UPJ-1P loudspeakers were used to complete the system: two for area fill coverage in the showroom area, the other two flown behind the main arrays to act as stage monitors.
Czoeppan feels the advantages of self-powered Meyer Sound systems are vital to BTS’s work. “Space is always a problem at these events. It’s a wonderful thing when you haven’t got cases full of amps that have to be placed somewhere,” he states. But the icing on the cake for Czoeppan is that the Meyer Sound systems are not only compact and sound great, but also easy to handle from a logistical standpoint. “For the cabinets and mounting frames, the only word that fits is ‘professional.’ The QuickFly hardware is fast, accurate, and secure. It fits very well and stays in place.”
It is plain to BTS managing director Randl that his company made a smart investment when they bought Meyer Sound. “With our Meyer Sound system, the audio is excellent, and always very clear. Our customers at Audi were very happy with the event.”
