In the small, central Italian town of Tolentino, the Politeama Theatre sat neglected for
a quarter of a century before efforts began to return it to its rightful place at the heart
of the local community. In October 2016, however, the project took on new
significance when Tolentino and its surrounding region were struck by a series of
earthquakes, including a 6.6 magnitude event that reduced other historic local
buildings to rubble. Now the Politeama Theater and its comprehensive refurbishment
have become symbols of Tolentino’s own resurgence.
The newly rejuvenated theatre was officially inaugurated in May 2017, and it already
boasts a full schedule of theatrical, cinematic, musical, and educational events. Work
originally began, however, in 2014, when ambitious plans were laid out for the
venue’s return, including state-of-the-art technical systems. The audio design was
devised by Claudio Giacomelli of AV Service, with technical support from Simone
Santarelli of Symetrix distributor SISME. At the core of the solution are Symetrix DSPs
routing and managing audio across multiple spaces.
On the ground floor, the entrance and main multipurpose performance space are
covered by a single Symetrix Radius AEC DSP handling audio requirements ranging
from background music to emergency announcements and paging. Equipped with the
same 128 (64×64) redundant Dante channels as the original Radius, the Radius AEC
adds the benefit of high performance wide-band acoustic echo cancellation featuring
zero latency direct outputs and discrete references. Background music sources like
Spotify and iTunes are integrated into the Dante network, supported by the Radius
DSP. For ease of use, Giacomelli and his team used SymVue software to create a fully
customised GUI, making it simple for the theatre’s staff to send different signals to
different zones as required.
Meanwhile, in the basement area, Symetrix Prism 8×8 DSPs have been specified for a
trio of multipurpose rooms available to host musical performances, workshops,
exhibitions and other cultural events. The systems can be combined if required for
specific larger-scale events, while Symetrix ARC-SW4e panels facilitate easy and
seamless control. An additional Symetrix Radius AEC DSP has been specified in the
170-seat second-floor cinema, optimising the performance of the installed sound
reinforcement system.
The combination of Dante networking and Symetrix DSPs has delivered a powerful
solution for the restored theatre, observes Santarelli: “We are really happy with the
results achieved with this new audio system. My role was to assist in the set-up of the
Dante network and to support the Symetrix DSP programming, the results of which
have been remarkable. The collaboration with Claudio Giacomelli, who is an excellent
technician, has resulted in a really high-quality audio and video system for this iconic
theatre.”
