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BUDAPEST, HUNGARY - SEPTEMBER 2009: Legendary trumpeter, composer, band
leader, and nine-time Grammy-winner, Wynton Marsalis, recently traveled with his fifteen-piece band, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, to perform in Budapest for the first time in his storied career. Some 1,750 denizens of Hungary's capital packed into the sold-out show at the Budapest congress& World Trade Center. Dismayed that the name-brand house, line-array system would be incapable of delivering ideal sound reinforcement - the kind in which the audience is unaware that a sound system is in use at all! - the organizers rented a modest complement of Danley full-range loudspeakers and subwoofers to provide smooth, natural-sounding amplification throughout the venue.
Ferenc Koscso is the technical director of Penna-Media Kft. in Budapest, a
pro audio A/V integrator, and adviser to sister company Penna-Poor, a
high-end home theater integrator that incorporates "pro" gear, including
Danley loudspeakers, into its designs. Penna-Poor was asked to provide a
better sound system in anticipation of the Wynton Marsalis concert.
"We are glad to have the Budapest Congress & World Trade Center as an easily
accessible, modern venue for performances of all kinds," said Koscso, "but
the acoustics are challenging. The seating area is very wide, making it hard
to get even coverage, and the balcony is set far from the stage. In
addition, the reverb time is far longer than one would like for jazz. The
organizers of the show were adamant that the show should sound completely
natural, as if there was no amplification being used at all."
Unfortunately, they were equally adamant that the house sound system - a
small line array - was not up to this task. As the venue owners were
contracted to use the house system, replacing it became a sensitive issue."Apart from rental costs and everything else, the show organizers ended up
paying an additional $1,500 simply to use the Danley system along with
everything else they were already paying for," explained Koscso. "Moreover,
we were left to devise our own speaker setup, as the venue would not provide
us with access to existing rigging points. The fact that the show organizers
were happy to jump these hurdles just to get the Danley system in there is a
testament to their faith in its superiority. They had rented Danley
loudspeakers from us before for other jazz concerts in Budapest and valued
their performance quality."
To accommodate the one-off system, Koscso and his collaborators built two
meter-high stands on either side of the stage on which they mounted four
Danley SH-50 full-range loudspeakers each (eight speakers total). On each
side, one pair of SH-50s covered the floor and one pair covered the balcony.
A "telescopic spacer" provided the perfect angle between the two pairs so
that there was no wasted energy in the space between the floor and balcony,
nor any vertical overlap. A pair of Danley TH-212 subwoofers - one with each
SH-50 cluster - provided smooth, deep low-end.
"Danley's unique ability to form seamless arrays along with the 100- by
50-degree dispersion of each pair of SH-50s ended up being ideal for this
venue," reported Koscso. "We had the same tonality and loudness in the first
few rows as we did at the back wall. The TH-212s were fantastic as well,
with a very tight bottom without any 'boom'." A Xilica DSP combined the
low-end and high-end components with very little EQ. A vintage Yamaha analog
console formed the front-end for the system, and MC2 Audio amplifiers
powered the speakers and subwoofers.
Koscso continued, "The sound engineer calibrated the volume at the back of
the hall based on the volume of the direct instruments on stage - no louder.
It was a real disappearing act! We heard lots of comments after the show
from people at the back of the hall - they told us how clever we were
because we didn't use a PA system. They fully believed that we had relied
solely on the stage sound! In a mediocre-sounding hall like this, with one
of the very best big bands in the world, I can think of no greater
compliment!"
