46 l July 2012
www.prosoundnewseurope.com
livefeature THE OLYMPICS –WILL THE WEST END SUFFER?
when there’s a major sporting event in a city. But it’s only for three weeks – so get over it. If Broadway can survive 911, can’t we stop moaning?
Chris Jordan, Blitz
Chris Headlam, Orbital Sound
Chris Jordan: I think London will be a nightmare, for transport and everything. Raymond Gubbay, for example, is not putting
Nonetheless, the inevitable
result of production time constraints is that sound designers, even when they’re renting, tend to stick with what’s familiar. That in itself will lead to a degree of standardisation. And, sure enough, the same names kept cropping up when our interviewees talked about products. “When it comes to consoles,
big shows use DiGiCo,” says Byrne. “Then it’s Yamaha. PM1Ds are still going strong, as are the PM5, the M7 and the new CL series. “Speakers? d&b all the way,”
he says. “Occasionally Meyer if it’s a production moving across from Broadway. For comms, more and more it’s wireless and more and more it comes down to HME or ClearCom, which are starting to become the industry standard.” “The regionals are also
buying more wireless,” he adds, “especially because of the health and safety angle – you’d rather have someone up in the flies on wireless than trailing 10m of cable. Yes, wired is cheaper, but even with a wired system, when people come to expand it they are tending to add wireless to it if they have the budget.” As for radio mics, he sees a clear distinction. “The high-end productions are tending to use Shure UHF-R. They’re cost- effective, and the back up is great. For the regionals, it tends to be Sennheiser G3s. They’re priced right, and you can chuck them against a wall and they bounce back. Plus they’re small, and size matters in theatre.” Indeed it does. Bell wrily
observes: “If you’re the bloke throwing himself off the
Duncan Bell, Autograph Sound
anything on… But no one has yet called to say ‘we’re closing’.
Chris Headlam: Historical data shows theatre suffers
barricades in Les Mis and landing on your transmitter a few times a week, you’re going to have something to say if that transmitter suddenly becomes larger.” But it’s not just radio transmitters that benefit from being small. One of the big selling points Yamaha pushed when it launched the PM1D back when grandma was a little girl, was the footprint. It still applies. “We recently swapped the desk on the Lion King,” Bell says. “Disney did a lot of number- crunching, and I’d estimate that freeing up extra seats has paid the cost within a year.”
DEFAULT OPTIONS? Size, though, isn’t the only reason for DiGiCo and Yamaha’s predominance in the theatre market. “Manufacturers do take input from sound designers,” says Jordan. “But theatre is not big enough to drive a big company. DiGiCo is listening hard. That isn’t and can’t be so much the case for many others. Theatre counts, but it isn’t a driver.” “People used to build stuff in their garden sheds,” adds Headlam. “Now, when software is a half-million pound project, you have to be a proper company. That’s not necessarily a good thing. You end up with less choice for the designer.” In fact, he is concerned about
what he sees as “an alarming lack of R&D taking place. There are fewer companies than there were 10 years ago and that’s a worrying trend. Add to that the way that production times have got smaller and people will opt for what is reliable and will do the job.” But to be fair, DiGiCo and Yamaha have worked hard
Duncan Bell: I don’t think theatre and the Olympics are mutually exclusive. It strikes me that there should be packages including tickets to the Olympics, a hotel and tickets to the theatre. But anyway, the weather has a bigger impact – hot weather is the biggest turn off for theatre.
for their success, and continue to court the theatre market with upgrades and new releases. “The DiGiCo SD7 is a great product,” says Bell, “and answers several questions with its software. Meanwhile, the competition haven’t competed!” That could change. Cadac –
which made its name in the theatre – has just been showing off its new CDC eight desk to the big noises on Broadway, complete with an updated and integrated version of its SAM sound design software. Expect an assault on the European markets imminently. But for now, there seem to be
few wildcards in the sound designer’s deck. DiGiCo and Yamaha for desks. d&b, Meyer and (particularly where it’s an installation) L-Acoustics for
Autograph Sound worked on the Broadway Production of Singin’ in the Rain
speakers. And, increasingly – although Orbital makes some convincing claims for the CSC system it distributes and uses (see box below) – QLab for playback and control. “QLab has been the fairly
standard playback system – and that’s spreading to smaller theatres,” says Jordan. “At Blitz, we’re starting to use QLab in corporate work. It’s easy to see why it’s popular – not just because it works. Who in the audio world doesn’t like the Apple? And it’s smart marketing to allow two-channel usage for free.” But even there, Headlam sees changes afoot. “The real must- have isn’t so much whether it’s CSC or QLab (which we also use). It’s a good computer-based playback system. But even that’s changing as consoles and playback are now becoming one – Yamaha has upped the ante with its new desks.”
WHAT NEXT? So desks have gone digital, playback has gone digital, desks have gone digital, and DSP has revolutionised speaker size and performance. What about radio mics? Shouldn’t they go digital too? As Headlam says: “People
have had a chance to revisit radio mics because of the spectrum sale. Shure’s latest products are a great example of that. The Axient, for instance, frequency-hops like a mobile phone. That’s a major step forward.” Efficient usage of spectrum is more of an issue for Bell,
CSC ON STARLIGHT TOUR
As sound designer for the UK tour of Starlight Express Ben Harrison is using a Yamaha PM1D. “It’s bursting at the seams,” he says, “but we’ve managed to get the whole show on the one console and, for a touring production, that’s a massive advantage.” The speakers are d&b – Q1 line arrays with a centre T-series hang to pull the vocal image out of the proscenium system and into the centre, plus a host of delays and point source fill-ins depending on the needs of the venue. Playback is via a CSC Show
Control system from Orbital Sound. “When I started in
theatre, all my effects were on 1/4-inch tape and even a small change could take a long while
to fix. With CSC we can instantly choose new start points, set loop points or manipulate the effect, all with the director sitting beside you.” Working alongside
Harrison, and
with particular input to the effects and control concepts is associate SD Dan Samson. “We’re using two dual-
redundant CSC systems with a specially-developed iPad remote-control app,” says Samson. “The system at front of
house handles the Voice of Control cues and surround effects, with the iPad app giving the DSM at the prompt desk a remote viewing and cue- triggering capability. The other, in the pit, handles click tracks, playback and further effects.”
who cautions that the industry’s battle with Ofcom over the spectrum sale is still ongoing. When it comes to digital radio mics, “There’s not enough that’s radical. Plus it would introduce extra latency.” And that brings us back to time, and the first item on Bell’s must-have wish-list. “Digital latency is a bigger issue in a theatre than for many others because of the proximity of live voices to digitally processed signals. We need to look at the whole chain.” “There’s still talk of a digital
revolution in radio mics,” agrees Jordan, “but that has not yet really happened. Can you really say ‘I can’t do the show without this’ when the previous generation of products is still pretty damn good?” And that might be a fair assessment of theatre sound’s current status. There’s nothing desperately new, because there’s nothing desperately wrong with the current market-leading products. All sound designers really need is a bit more time to work with them. n
www.autograph.co.uk www.blitzcommunications.co.uk www.cadac-sound.com www.clearcom.com www.ctrelectronics.co.uk www.dbaudio.com www.digico.biz www.hme.com www.l-acoustics.com www.meyersound.com www.orbitalsound.co.uk www.figure53.com www.en-de.sennheiser.com www.shure.com www.yamahaproaudio.com
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