Neglected for a quarter of a century, 2016, the Teatro Politeama has returned to serve the small, central Italian town of Tolentino, and already boasts a full schedule of theatrical, cinematic, musical and educational events.
Work began in 2014, when ambitious plans were laid for state-of-the-art technical systems but the project acquired 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 completed, the Teatro Politeama’s refurbishment has become a symbol of Tolentino’s own resurgence.
The systems in the rejuvenated theatre were devised by Claudio Giacomelli, of A/V 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 (64x64) redundant Dante channels as the original Radius, the Radius AEC adds 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 custom GUI, making it simple for the theatre staff to send different signals to different zones as required.
In the basement area, Symetrix Prism 8x8 DSPs serve three multipurpose rooms that 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 control. An additional Symetrix Radius AEC DSP serves 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: ‘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, says Santarelli. ‘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.’
