This paper is available in Français too
At the begining of september, one of the most beautiful event locations in Holland namely – Philharmonie Haarlem- took reception of a new Clair Brothers FOH audio system replacing another American system in the main hall.
The history of Philharmonie goes back to 1873, the year in which the concert hall was built. Over the years, Philharmonie evolved into a multi-functional venue and offers a broad variety of top-notch entertainment.
From facilitating rock concerts and dance events to congress and theatre, this high profile venue’s functionality knows no bounds. In order to serve diverse audiences, the main hall can very quickly being transformed from a flat floor live audio club into a full theatre. (angled floor)
The long reverb and consequently the acoustic footprint of the main hall related to the electro acoustic requirements of its diverse user group caused the technical director, Marco Hartendorf, and his chief audio, Remy Kruitbosch, moments of stress and frustration. They turned this frustration into a tender for a new PA system that should easily cope with all the challenges.
A long period of market surveying, tendering and a comprehensive demo program resulted in a final shoot out between Clair Brothers and a French manufacturer.
Many people listened to the systems and a summary of all parameters to be judged resulted in a clear victory for Clair Brothers. Clair offered much more detailing and headroom over the entire bandwidth sub – top highs were the most important outcomes.
The system is installed in a way which offers the crew a system usage in various setups without compromising to the sonic performance. Flying with or without subs and even ground stacking in the large foyer can be done very quickly without fiddling around endlessly with settings.
Clair Brothers’ reputation is built on headroom, so there was no compromise to commercial aspects let alone build quality. This results in unprecedented product specs and stunning sonic performance.
Marco Hartendorf and Remy Kruitbosch decided not to follow the path of commodity brands/products with an average performance but aimed for the very best PA brand available.
Axel Nagtegaal who guided this project on behalf of The Audio Specialists states,
“We are extremely proud of winning this project since almost every serious brand available in Holland was very keen to add this beautiful location to their reference list, so you can imagine the fierse competition.
In the end, quality drove the final verdict and that is just the playground on which our company finds its foundation”.
The Clair Brothers system installed contains:
- 18 x Clair i208 line array elements
- 4 x Clair iS118 arrayable subwoofers
- 4 x Clair CS218 subwoofers
- 2 x Clair kiT15 sidefills
- 2 x Clair CS18-M mobile subwoofers for portable usage of the kiT set
- 4 x Clair FF2 frontfills
- 8 x Clair Brothers / Lab PLM10 network amps with Clair Lake software.
- 1 x HP Tablet PC + WIFI router for LAKE control
- 2 x custom made transport units allowing 1 technician to store or built the entire line array
- 1 x Clair kiT15 portable foyer system incl. subs.
