Replacement of Lighthouse Theatre Sound System

⁠⁠⁠Warrnambool City Council invites submissions for the provision of a replacement Sound System, inclusive of design, supply, installation & commissioning works for the Lighthouse Theatre’s main auditorium.

The Lighthouse Theatre is south-west Victoria’s leading creative hub for performing arts, cultural and corporate events. The venue presents over 500 events per year, across a wide range of genres including drama, music, comedy, cinema and musical; as well as being the major conference, meeting & event centre for the region. Annually, we attract over 60,000 attendances across our ticketed & non-ticketed operations.

The theatre is owned and operated by Warrnambool City Council, and services the wider south-west region for professional, community and corporate clientele.

The main theatre is home to a majority of our events and performances. It is located in the original 1880’s Warrnambool Town Hall, which was originally renovated into a Proscenium Arch theatre in 1982, and received an $8.9 million redevelopment in 2011 which included significant works to the theatrical infrastructure including the overhaul and upgrading the flying system, lighting, seating & venue cabling and patching facilities. The sound system received a minor refreshment and upgrade, but has maintained its original older components, supplemented by an updated processing architecture and the addition of fill & delay sources. Despite these changes, the system has continued to be generally insufficient for the needs of our venue clients and the community; along with ongoing issues related to with reliability and component failure due to the major system elements & components being well past their end-of-life period.

The current system was independently reviewed in 2019 and considered well past its useful end of life, and regular patron & client complaints have been received since redevelopment regarding the quality and definition of the sound provided by the system. There are significant portions of the auditorium that are poorly covered by the system, and there is no uniformity in the experience our patrons receive in various seating locations. The system is often required to be supplemented with additional elements & other equipment for larger local events, and many professional touring artists are required to tour their entire own, independent, sound systems for their concerts.