Immersive & spatialized sound – Karlín Theatre

The Karlin Theatre, located in the heart of Prague, is one of the city’s most prestigious and historic cultural institutions. Founded in 1881, the theater has a long tradition of diverse performances ranging from operas and musicals to plays and concerts. With its elegant architecture and exceptional acoustics, the Karlin Theatre attracts thousands of spectators every year, eager to enjoy high-quality artistic experiences.

Objectives

As a pioneer in the adoption of cutting-edge technologies to improve the production and management of its shows, the Karlin Theatre recently integrated K SYSTEM to optimize its technical performance. This innovative system was deployed by our local distributor Pro Music to meet the theater’s specific spatialized sound requirements.

Project Progress

The project was led by Petr Šťásek, technical consultant at Pro Music, Naostage’s distributor for the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Prior to final installation, an evaluation of the system’s capabilities was carried out at the local UFFO theater in Trutnov.

After an in-depth market analysis and a discovery of Naostage at ISE 2023 in Barcelona, the K SYSTEM was chosen for its reliability and unique capabilities.

The KAPTA sensors were installed discreetly, so as not to interfere with decorations and other stage technology. For their part, KORE and KRATOS were installed and configured without a hitch.

K SYSTEM is used with L-Acoustic’s L-ISA audio system, with nine front-end clusters offering high horizontal resolution and optimizing the listening experience.

Then it’s just a matter of configuring the audio objects (microphones, instruments, effects) with precise parameters for panorama, depth, width and auxiliary send.

Results

Precise, automated tracking: the K SYSTEM enables precise tracking of moving actors, with XYZ coordinates sent to the L-ISA processor, which translates them into panorama and depth information.

Enhanced Audience Experience: The actors’ voices, picked up by wireless microphones, are transmitted to the spatialized sound system, creating a natural convergence of sound and image, making the performance more realistic for the audience.

Reliability and efficiency: The system proved reliable and efficiently managed the position of audio objects for 16 actors simultaneously, contributing to an immersive experience during the six weekly musical performances.

Conclusion

The project at the Karlín Musical Theatre illustrates the effectiveness of Naostage’s K SYSTEM in a complex theatrical environment. Thanks to careful installation and state-of-the-art technology, the theater was able to offer an enhanced audiovisual experience, boosting audience satisfaction and optimizing musical and theatrical performances.

Greetings

Thanks to Petr Šťásek of Pro Music for his technical direction, and to the Karlín Musical Theatre team for their collaboration and commitment to this innovative project.