d&b plays in the big league at Euro 2008
Like a plague of mega sports bars, this year's Euro 2008 competition sees Switzerland sprouting giant outdoor LED screens with concert style PA systems in sixteen of its major provincial cities. Sponsored by Swiss Banking giant UBS, of the sixteen locations, all will serve beer and sausages, but sadly only twelve will attract large crowds of discerning football fans. Why just twelve? Because only these twelve have PA systems that reach the parts other beers cannot reach. Have you guessed who it is yet?
UBS contracted Habegger AG, a leading Swiss event and production specialist to oversee the sixteen venues.
Mostly situated in downtown locations, Habegger's project leader Elias Ruh explained, "For us the Q-Series system was an obvious choice; small and easy to rig, the 75° horizontal dispersion of this light weight line array is ideal for sound containment in a close urban area. But of course football fans sitting in the listening area miss nothing, at 139 dB SPL (1 m) max how could they? Yet so precise is the pattern control we have had zero complaints from residents; fantastiche."
Procon were supported in their work by 2M Audio, d&b's Swiss Distributor, who in turn sourced additional Q loudspeakers from d&b in Germany. Similarly Procon organised a sub-hire of d&b's J-Series loudspeakers from Yousound in Augsburg near Munich, for a much bigger screen display and public area in Lugano where the throw distance exceeds 75 metres, "but again, the J gives perfect containment," said Ruh, "the levels fall away so rapidly outside the specified 80° horizontal that even over the longer throw we have been able to avoid upsetting any of the neighbours. Just great."
Chocolate, cheese and trains on time; the Swiss have always done a diverse range of things very well. And with their predilection for precision instruments we can now add line arrays, d&b's Q-Series and J-Series systems to be precise: sharp as a (Swiss Army) knife.
Whilst Lugano was reinforced by a J-Series system, Kreuzlingen, Glarus, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Sion, Nyon, Zug, Thun, Chur, Solothurn, St. Gallen and Buchs SG were all reinforced by Q-Series loudspeaker systems.
