Woodstock Opera House, Woodstock, IL
Woodstock Opera House Upgrades with Bag End Speakers
Woodstock, Illinois – The Woodstock Opera House was built in 1889 to house the city’s library, council chamber, law court, fire department and auditorium. Today it is a performance venue for plays, musicals, dance performances and individual performers and lecturers, and also hosts two popular annual festivals, the Woodstock Folk Festival and the Woodstock Mozart Festival. This variety requires an adaptable sound system, and for a recent upgrade, sound consultant and vendor David Jack of Pro-Tech Services, Inc. chose Bag End speakers for their “accurate sound reproduction” and the company’s excellent customer service, which helped us meet the unusual requirements of this installation.”
Because the Opera House is a historic building physically mounting speaker cabinets to walls was not possible, according to Dave Reeve, the Opera House’s technical director. “Minimal impact to the building was key to the installation, and the system needed to be removable with minimal effort when it wouldn’t be needed.”
The installation includes eight Bag End TA1200-RF portable floor monitors, a TA2000 12-inch center house speaker and four TA5000 15-inch main speakers. The mixing console is a Yamaha LS9-32 digital console with various snakes and wiring to connect the system.
Installing the portable floor monitors was simple, since they could be removed. The mains, however, had to be flown, and had to be easily removable. The solution was to drill four small holes in the auditorium ceiling and install winches to lower the support wires and remove the main speakers as needed, then draw the wires up out of sight.
This arrangement not only meets the needs of the Opera House but also eliminates the potential vibrations and reflections that can result from wall installation, resulting in clear, undistorted sound,” Jack noted.
“The benefits of this installation have been multiple,” added Reeve. “The turnaround time for setting up the sound system between these different kinds of performers has been simplified, and our audiences have praised the new sound quality.