This past week, an all new, and historic, concert hall was recently completed in Hamburg, Germany and the new building was christened with a concert by the Norddeutsche Rundfunk (NDR) Elbphilharmonie Symphony Orchestra which was recorded and broadcast by the Lawo company using their state of the art audio consoles.
Lawo designs and manufactures pioneering network, control, audio and video technology for broadcast and post production, as well as live performance and theatrical applications. Products include control and monitoring systems, digital audio mixing consoles, routers, video processing tools as well as solutions for IP-based A/V infrastructures and routing systems. All products are developed in Germany and manufactured according to highest quality standards at the company’s headquarters in the Rhine valley town of Rastatt, Germany.
The all new, and historic, building sits majestically amid Hamburg's storied history and it is known as the Big Concert Hall. The construction project to build the new concert hall took a decade to complete. The memorable and stirring concert by the symphony was recorded by Lawo and broadcast right from the concert hall itself by Germany's public broadcaster, Norddeutscher Rundfunk.
Lawo recorded and broadcast from the in concert hall studio with their Lawo mc²66 for the audio mix. Sound for both live transmission and recording were mixed in the NDR audio control room within the Elbphilharmonie facilities. This studio forms part of an audio concept that networks this mc²66 console with five further Lawo mc²36 consoles – used for the sound mix in the Big and the Small Concert Hall and in Hall 3 – as well as DALLIS I/O Systems, via a Nova73 router using RAVENNA. This infrastructure allows all audio consoles to have access to all of the DALLIS units in the building, and gives coordinated access rights management. For parallel live broadcasts from multiple halls, this concept allows the link-up of an NDR OB van – currently NDR Ü42 – with the RAVENNA network in the Elbphilharmonie complex.
Among the many guests of honor for the première were Germany’s President, Joachim Gauck, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Hamburg’s Governing Mayor Olaf Scholz. The NDR broadcast this festive event and the concert live to a combined TV and radio audience and via its website.
