Aktuelle News & Schlagzeilen
Ghent’s Club Wintercircus opens with L-Acoustics L-ISA immersive audio at its core
Located within one of Belgium’s most storied historic structures in the heart of Ghent, Club Wintercircus was conceived from the ground up as a destination for both nightlife and live music - a place where electronic culture and concert production share the same room.
When Viernulvier and Democrazy, two of Ghent’s leading cultural organizations, launched the project, their brief was precise: deliver an immersive audio experience. L-Acoustics Certified Partner XLR Pro, a Belgian integration specialist, won the public tender in 2024. Their answer to the brief was an L-Acoustics L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound installation. Their design is a full object-based installation aiming to place every person in the 550-capacity room at the centre of the performance, regardless of where they’re standing.
The Wintercircus building is a 19th-century circular structure that is part of a larger heritage redevelopment project. The club itself, however, is entirely new: purpose-built for live music and nightlife, with acoustics baked into the design from day one rather than retrofitted as an afterthought.
That circular geometry is an acoustic challenge. Reflections and standing waves are inherent to the shape, and XLR Pro had to model and manage them carefully. Microphone positions during calibration were chosen with the room’s geometry in mind to achieve natural, balanced coverage across the entire floor.
The structural demands went further still. With a venue designed to run at high SPL for extended periods, mechanical isolation was non-negotiable. “The entire sound system needed to be fully isolated from the building structure”, says Louis Lukusa, CEO at XLR Pro. “Every loudspeaker is mechanically decoupled from ceilings and walls to avoid vibration transfer and ensure complete acoustic isolation.”
Soundvision, with its L-ISA extension, was central to the design process, allowing XLR Pro to visualize spatial imaging, assess immersive coverage, and refine the system long before a single cabinet was hung. The main front-of-house configuration features five hangs of A10i loudspeakers, each comprising three A10i Focus and one A10i Wide.
Subwoofers are positioned underneath the stage - a deliberate design choice that keeps them entirely hidden from view. Eight KS21i units, arranged in a lightly arced configuration, provide smooth bass distribution.
Immersion beyond the front plane is delivered by eleven X12 loudspeakers for surround reinforcement and eleven X8 units deployed as elevation channels, enabling precise object-based placement of sound in three dimensions. An L-ISA Processor using 32 outputs drives the spatial engine, while the system is powered by three LA7.16i and one LA4X amplified controllers.
A P1 processor is used to bring a stereo input onto the Milan-AVB network, allowing visiting engineers to feed a simple left-right signal directly into the system when full immersive processing isn’t required. This maintains compatibility with the venue’s L-ISA configuration.
The system runs entirely on a Milan-AVB network backbone, managed via two LS10 switches and integrated into an Agora MK2 Ghost switch infrastructure that carries AVB, Dante, and GigaAce traffic as a converged network over fully redundant 10-gigabit fiber. The AVB boundary clock built into the Agora switch ensures solid synchronization across the entire network with imperceptible latency.
At the console, an Allen & Heath dLive handles source management and format conversion, feeding the L-ISA Processor via MADI. The result is a single unified ecosystem where all protocols coexist cleanly. “For us at XLR Pro, Milan-AVB has become the standard whenever we work with L-Acoustics”, notes Lukusa.
The project timeline was demanding: XLR Pro had five weeks to design, order, install, and commission the full system, and deliver training to the venue’s technical team before opening night. “From the very first stage of assessing the quality requirements and criteria leading to a new immersive sound design for Club Wintercircus, L-Acoustics proved to be our best choice”, says Oliver Houttekiet, Technical Director at Wintercircus.
Pictured (left to right): Louis Lukusa, Oliver Houttekiet. (Photos: Alexandre Aretz)
SCHLAGZEILEN
news archiv
suche
© 1999 - 2026 Entertainment Technology Press Limited News Stories