Theater Akzent Chooses Robe DL Series

	Photo: Louise Stickland

Gerhard Scherer is a happy man since 24 x Robe DL7S Profiles and DL4S Profiles -- 12 of each fixture -- have been installed at the Theater Akzent Theatre in Vienna...a busy producing and receiving house located in the Wieden district of Austria's capital city, famous for its culture and charm.

Head of lighting Scherer has been working at Akzent since it was founded in 1989 in the grounds of the former Palais Nathaniel Rothschild. Its postmodern architecture was designed by Rudolf Jarosch and it offers a 455-seat main house, a studio that can accommodate 80 people and a 380-capacity event space.

When it came to the most recent technical upgrades for lighting, he was looking for powerful, refined profile LED fixtures with additive color mixing, and Robe's DL range ticked all the boxes!

Also responsible for lighting 90% of the incoming shows, this has made Scherer's life infinitely easier and more enjoyable...and he's not looked back.

For him, the DL7S profile in particular is "one of the best luminaires I've ever seen"...and very different to what he would normally expect in the white ranges from an LED lightsource.

They considered several different options by four leading brands including Robe before making the investment, although right from the start Robe had an edge because 11 years ago, Akzent purchased some ColorSpot 700E ATs which are still working really well, the company says.

"They have been used almost every day for all of that time and there's never been a single issue," confirms Scherer.

The DL4Ss were purchased first, and a year later came the DL7Ss, which feature the seven color LED engine, incredibly smooth and even color mixing and a very high CRI and is "in a class of its own in terms of quality," says Scherer.

During his time at the theatre, he's seen massive changes on the technology front. First with color changing devices like scrollers, then moving lights as they became commercially available and affordable...and now the evolution continues with LED products, a field in which Robe is paying specific attention.

Akzent was in fact the first theatre in Austria to have moving lights in its house rig. "We like to upkeep abreast of the trends," he comments, and a typical show lighting rig will currently contain around 42 moving lights -- all LED (they also have some LED washes).

Now they have the DLs, they have color consistency throughout the rig, the dimming is "excellent" and the whites are "amazing" thanks to the 7-color engine.

Akzent is part state funded and part self-financed. The show schedule is very tight, but with the DLS Profiles in house -- they are rigged on various over-stage pipes -- they can now be infinitely more flexible in their approach to lighting any type or style of performance, the company says

Scherer is very much a Robe fan right now. "The DL7S Profile is very innovative and much more adaptable that a discharge fixture in this scenario and both these and the DL4S Profiles are ideal for us," he concludes.