Bringing together Utrecht’s Tivoli and Vredenburg venues, Tivoli Vredenburg is built around the existing Vredenburg theatre and concert hall, now known as the Grote Zaal (Great Hall). A new building houses four further rooms – Ronda, Pandora, Hertz and Cloud Nine – each designed by a different architect to host different musical styles. In all, the complex covers 31,000m² and features five auditoria, 22 dressing rooms, 11 circulation spaces and 24 bars/restaurants, connected by a cathedral-like foyer.

For its technical systems, Tivoli Vredenburg called on TM Audio Holland and Audiopro Nederland, who liaised to provide consistency of sound quality, reliability and ease of use in each room. DiGiCo mixing consoles form a central part of the resultant system, with ASL systems providing comms.

‘The engineers at both Vredenburg and Tivoli venues had worked with DiGiCo consoles for a while before the merger,’ says Allert Aalders, who has been a Tivoli sound engineer since 1998 and maintains the role at the new venue. ‘The flexibility of the platform and the fact that most of our crew were already familiar with them played a big part in the decision.’

‘The former Vredenburg Theatre engineers were already used to working with DiGiCo’s SD9 and SD11 consoles,’ adds TM Audio’s Jaap Pronk. ‘And as the Tivoli engineers also had experience with using an SD8 for monitoring, it made sense to continue with familiar consoles that we knew would meet the venue’s criteria.’

Ronda, which is situated on the second floor and mostly hosts pop concerts, uses an SD5 with SD 192 rack at FOH and an SD8 with D2 Rack at monitors. Pandora, a multi-format ‘crossover’ room used for dance parties, fashion shows and concerts has an SD8-24 at monitors. Hertz, which is a more intimate space for chamber music, stand-up comedy and theatre, has SD9s at FOH, as does Cloud Nine, a jazz venue also used for VIP concerts and club nights, with the option for the Hertz SD9 to also be used as a monitor desk for Cloud Nine. Finally, an SD11i with D-Rack is mixing small live acts in the Cloud Nine foyer, and can also be used as a mobile music system.

‘The consoles can be moved around the venues to provide maximum flexibility,’ says Pronk. ‘Additionally, all the rooms work with formats that have been placed in the consoles’ Template menus for inexperienced guest engineers and all trained engineers can help the guest engineers out, which is working very well.’

All DiGiCo SD systems support 96kHz, 24-bit audio, the old Madi racks having been updated to new D-Racks. All outputs on the racks are equipped with AES/EBU output cards, connected to the digital inputs of the amplifiers, which results in a full digital audio path. The 32 channel D-Racks, 48 channel D2 Racks and the SD-Racks now all operate at 96kHz.

‘You can make DiGiCo desks exactly the desks you want them to be,’ Aalders says. ‘And the workflow is super fast.’

To make each venue within the new complex as versatile as possible, the 22 dressing rooms are not allocated to particular auditoriums/stages. This made the job of designing a comms system particularly difficult for Utrecht-based Switch Concepts, tasked with installing a comprehensive communications system. The company presented Tivoli Vredenburg with a choice of three systems, and the Tivoli Vredenburg technical team chose an ASL digital system as the best solution.

‘In a building with nine floors and five different stages, a highly flexible intercom system is required,’ says Switch Concept’s Frank Verbeek. ‘The ability to have both daisychain and star wiring topologies was a big advantage. ASL’s configuration software was also a key reason why we chose the system, because it is very fast and straightforward to use and it provides all the power you need for this type of environment.’

Main components of the ASL system include DS 4002 master and slave matrix units, 15 DS 85 booster/data repeater units, 24 DS 290 beltpacks, 16 DS gooseneck microphones, 25 tabletop speaker stations (ranging from 32 to two channels), 24 DS130 paging speakers and 18 interface units. All of the systems’ speaker stations and beltpacks are powered via the Cat6 intercom lines, enabling them to operate without a separate power connection, wherever they’re located.

Key to the installation is a DS 130L paging loudspeaker installed in each dressing room, all with override function. Each speaker can be quickly reassigned to any auditorium’s comms in the system’s ConfigurIT software. Also, even if the volume of the stage relay has been turned down, intercom announcements come through to the speaker at a preset level.

‘Tivoli Vredenburg is the Netherlands biggest live music venue and we are really pleased that an ASL system was chosen for such a prestigious installation,’ says ASL Sales & Marketing Director, Susan McLohon. ‘Tivoli Vredenburg’s core value is that it is ‘for everyone’ and the ASL system will help to ensure that shows run as smoothly as possible for artists ranging from the highest profile star to the most amateur group.’