The MCH (Messe Center Herning) group is one of Scandinavia’s largest congress
centres, based in the city of Herning, mid Jutland, Denmark, with large buildings
and arenas for hosting conferences, sports events and rock concerts. The group has
just installed a new d&b audiotechnik loudspeaker system into its theatre in Herning
town centre, which will be used for both conferences and live music events.

The decision to select d&b was made by a team of in-house and external
professionals after presentations and listening tests. MCH’s head of sound, Tommas
Hviid Kristensen, commented, “We wanted a premium brand system that would be
rider friendly for both in-house and visiting engineers, so we asked a number of
companies to tender. Each company set up a mono hang of their system so that we
could hear them in the theatre and then decide which we preferred.’

Lars Baun Frederiksen, Managing Director of d&b Distributor in Denmark, Alfa Audio
A/S, explained how they were involved. “We had applied for the tender and had
come along to the set up day. However, we quickly discovered when we were
setting up that our sound card had broken, and due to the reasonably remote
location of the theatre, it was a long drive for us to get a replacement, which meant
we had very little time left in our set up slot. We literally flew the speakers, gave
the system one or two quick tweaks, then just enabled ArrayProcessing – it sounded
fantastic! Everyone at the theatre was impressed at how easy it was to make the
system sound good, straight out of the box.’

The new loudspeaker system comprises mainly the d&b Y-Series and delivers
complete flexibility for reproducing speech and music. Each of the two arrays
features four Y8 and four Y12 loudspeakers.

The flexible Y-Series is proving one of d&b’s most successful solutions for small to
mid-size applications. The Y8 and Y12 loudspeakers share the same driver
arrangement, with two 8′ dipolar mounted drivers and a 1.4′ HF driver combined
with a central wave guide. Their advanced bass-reflex design delivers full
bandwidth capabilities with an extended low frequency output. At the MCH Theatre
the loudspeakers are driven by four D20 amplifiers for the Y8 and Y12s and a D80
amplifier for the subwoofers. Both four channel devices contain extensive Digital
Signal Processing capabilities to provide comprehensive loudspeaker management
and specific switchable filter functions, enabling the user to accurately target the
system response, whatever the requirements.

Two d&b DS10 Audio network bridges were also installed at the MCH Theatre – one
at the front of house position and one at the amplifiers. DS10 makes it possible to
input AES3 signals into the Dante stream, and to convert from Dante back to AES3
going into the amplifiers. It’s also simple to connect external consoles to the system
via a Dante interface.