German Museum of Film Relies on Q-Sys™ to Control Its Current and Future Multimedia Needs

Frankfurt am Main, Germany (June 2012) – Following a comprehensive refit, the German Museum of Film has installed the Q-Sys™ Integrated System platform to manage and route all of the audio sources under its roof, together with K Series active loudspeakers to handle playback in its new demonstration and seminar rooms.

The Museum of Film opened in 1984 in Frankfurt am Main and has always been more than a traditional, educational film museum. With its rolling programme of exhibitions, cinema presentations and retrospectives, it has sought to give visitors an insight into all of the manifold historical, aesthetic and technical aspects of film as an artistic medium.

Last August saw the completion of an 18-month renovation project at the Museum of Film. The totally refurbished building, with its striking architecture and its new permanent exhibition facilities, has been equipped to meet the challenges of the next few years, one of which was bringing the technical facilities right up to date. Audio in the multimedia facilities at the museum, which consist of large numbers of audio-visual playback systems including video monitors and projectors with audio playback features, is now centrally managed, routed and controlled using Q-Sys, the QSC digital audio networking platform. Designed to be expandable to meet the museum’s future multimedia needs, the system currently consists of a Core 1000 processor and several I/O Frames.

As part of the museum's refit, a complete film studio and two workshops were installed so that visitors have the ability to be hands-on in creating their own film productions. The technical design of these rooms was conceived with great care to ensure that visitors could create something of value within the time constraints inherent in visiting a museum. The studio and workshops are also used for seminars as part of a far-reaching film studies programme focusing on film as an art form and cultural asset. In order to reproduce and play back all elements of film sound in the seminars to the highest possible standard, including music, foley and location sound and dialogue, QSC K Series active loudspeakers were installed in the studio and workshop areas. Featuring 1000W of Class D power amplification per cabinet and advanced DSP to ensure full-range, peak performance, the compact yet high-output K8 speakers fit in unobtrusively in the museum's studio and presentation rooms.

Surveying the completed system solution after the reopening of the museum, Thomas Worschech, Head of the Museum's Film Archive commented, "This renovation has brought about the complete reinvention of the film museum, both visually and technically."