Staging German-language productions ranging from traditional plays to the modern productions, festivals and cultural exchanges, Timișoara’s German State Theater has recently installed a fully-digital audio system centred on a pair of Yamaha QL series mixing consoles.

The Romanian venue traces its history to the mid-1700s and today is based on the German Theater Hall of the city’s Palace of Culture  – with the city’s Opera House, Romanian National Theater and Hungarian State Theater. In 2014 Brașov-based dB Technolight was contracted to install a Dante with a view to progressively replacing its analogue audio system with completely digital alternative. The new system features two QL series mixing consoles and Yamaha R-series I/O for FOH and monitors.

‘Quality and high performance were mandatory requirements but the budget was also an important factor, so we needed to know that the equipment we chose would deliver those benefits and be very cost-effective,’ says venue Technical Manager, Laurence Rippel. ‘We studied the available options and thought that the Yamaha QL series, which we had seen demonstrated at Yamaha’s professional audio symposium at Recklinghausen, Germany, would be the best solution. We asked dB Technolight to arrange a further demonstration here in the German Theater Hall, which proved it was the right choice.’

Budgets meant that the project had to be completed in stages, so dB Technolight initially installed a Yamaha QL1 console with Rio1608-D I/O, extension Ro8-D output and Steinberg Nuendo Live multitrack recording software. Once this had proved its capabilities on real shows to the German State Theater staff, the go-ahead was given to install a QL5 console, with additional Rio1608-D and Ro8-D units.

‘Installing the QL1 first was important, because the German State Theater saw in a “real-world” situation that the QL series brought many benefits to its productions,’ explains dB Technolight’s Petru Hosu.

‘It was that experience which confirmed their desire to invest in the larger QL5 and extra I/O options,’ Rippel adds. ‘The Yamaha QL series is a professional mixing desk at a very attractive price point. Our engineers have found them very easy to use and all of our shows are running much more smoothly than with the old analogue system. We invite other engineers to mix with them at a number of events and all have been impressed by their facilities, sound quality and straightforward user interface.’