Shure Wireless Microphones enable Hybrid Lectures in the Auditorium at the University of Lucerne

Customer Profile

The history of the University of Lucerne dates back to about 1600 AD; it evolved from the Jesuit college in Lucerne. Today, 3200 students and 82 professors study and teach at the university's four faculties – the Faculty of Theology, Faculty of Hu-manities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Law, and Faculty of Economics and Manage-ment. Over the years, the university has continuously adopted new technologies. For example, various Shure products have been used for teaching since 2011. The university was also one of the first to invest in high-quality conferencing products from the Shure Microflex Advance series. Last year, it upgraded its auditorium.

Challenge

In order to enable remote participation in its lectures in the future, the university first needed to find a solution for its largest auditorium. This 250-seat room is used for a wide variety of teaching formats by the faculty. The goal was to complement the existing Shure systems to enable hybrid and digital lectures in the future. For this purpose, the university required a reliable, high-quality conferencing system that is intuitive to operate. Moreover, it planned to equip its podcasting rooms, as well.

The project was carried out by the university's Department of Facility Management in cooperation with Rebsamen Technics AG from Horw, Switzerland.

Solution

The planning stage began with various audio tests carried out by the University of Lucerne and Rebsamen Technics in cooperation with Shure in 2017. After the team were satisfied with the quality of the results, the decision was made to implement two Shure MXA910 microphones. These two ceiling array microphones form the

central element of the new solution. The new conferencing system ensures that voices are perfectly captured in the auditorium. The audio signal can be fed to digi-tal video conferencing codecs for hybrid lectures.

Thanks to four loudspeakers, “voice lift” can be activated when required. This en-sures the lecturer can be heard equally loudly and clearly at any location in the room. Every usage scenario, from lectures to group discussions among students, is captured by the MXA910 microphones and participants at home can follow the events remotely.

In addition, lecturers can use a variety of handheld and bodypack transmitters in combination with the Shure QLX-D Digital Wireless System in specific rooms, when recording podcasts for instance.

Advantages

The auditorium of the university was equipped with a fully integrated, complex au-dio solution that is as easy to use as possible. “The biggest benefit of these rooms to the university is that external lecturers can easily use the system, even without prior experience” (Walti Weingartner, Project Leader Rebsamen Technics AG).

The audio signal is captured fully automatically in the room and can be shared with external participants, e.g. via Zoom. Another benefit was that the existing Shure products are compatible with the new solution and therefore easy to integrate.

“It's important for us that these systems are intuitive to use, so we get the quality we need ultimately”, says Patrick Meier, Head of Facility Management at University of Lucerne.

The project was notable for the extremely good collaboration between all parties and Shure's extensive experience in working with universities.