www.psneurope.com


December 2012 l 33


liveinterview


The cast is made up of 40 singers


engineers have to be on top of our game, and learn the show, and know exactly when lines come and go.


Did you seek out any ‘theatre sound operators’ before you took on the task? Initially I spoke to sound designer Mick Potter who has done a lot of Broadway, Vegas shows and so on. We realised very quickly that although we are both engineers, what we do is entirely different; we discussed a co-operative venture but it wasn’t going to work. This had to be approached as a rock show.


same thing if they are coming on and they clear their throat: you have to mute that mic until the line is about to be delivered, then you fade it up.


So has this meant warning actors not to clear their throats? It’s more about discipline for what we do. Trying to tell them not to chatter offstage is not really practical. The


What challenges did you face? One of the big problems was microphone choices. With 40 singers, all on headsets, I needed something that was rock solid. Typically, the mics that I’d been led to understand were normal in the theatre, weren’t going to work here. I was worried that I was going to enter a gunfight with a knife! I wanted something that would deliver enough weight and gain before feedback, and give me a fat enough sound. I was less concerned about physical appearance and more concerned about having a mic that worked. I didn’t know if such a mic existed.


So what did you do? We had a shoot-out, a blind test at SSE HQ. The outcome amazed us. The AKG we chose – the C 544 L – was way ahead of the rest. It’s a big and sturdy condenser headset, great for this application. There was some opposition at first, because they don’t look pretty. But it was Andrew [Lloyd-Webber] who resolved it – he said, it’s a rock show, the audience will expect to see mics, that’s what you need to do the job. Throughout the tour,


there’s been no redundancy and no failures. We just bend them to shape and off we go. We’ve been using them with Shure UHF-R transmitters/receivers.


What advantages does the Midas XL8 present to you? Primarily: sonically. I love the way they’ve captured the analogue console legacy in a digital console.


Are you a ‘Midas man’? My first digital console was a Harrison! But I have an open mind. And Midas has been consistently good. Speed of access is important.


With analogue, everything is there; with digital, you generally have to go looking for things. The beauty of the XL8 is the POP (population) Groups – a way of accessing things you need without globally switching layers. For this tour, the channel count was going to be high (96 in fact),


so an XL8 made more sense because access is better as you have more real estate available. And it’s worked out exactly where I want it to be: it’s much quicker to navigate, sonically it never disappoints, and getting up to speed with it again was quick because it’s very user-friendly.


How has the arena tour been? Up and down the country, all arenas are different – but I’ve got [SSE’s] Pete Hughes and Chris Courtney with me, they’ve been incredibly good, tuning the system and plotting it in advance so the PA is aimed exactly where it needs to be while keeping it at exactly the right level, so we’re not exciting the room too much. Loud enough to have plenty of punch but with no resonances to spoil the picture. They do the work and I take all the glory!


What’s the main thing that you’ve learned? You can’t be lazy, you can’t sit still. And I think it makes you a better engineer. I’ve had to raise my game, which is never a bad thing.


Roger Lindsay and the Midas XL8: “Sonically, it never disappoints”


What’s the best bit? I still like ‘Superstar’. But the whole show has lots of light and shade – how could Lloyd-Webber write that when he was only 21?! n www.midasconsoles.com


Precision control at your fingertips


Keeping control of high performance systems is often a complicated undertaking. No matter how large or complex the sound system however, the new LM 44 from Lake will drive it with absolute precision, and minimum effort. LM 44 is a powerful, compact, full-featured digital audio system processor with peerless credentials.


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*Please note the racing steering wheel depicted is for artistic purposes only


LM Series Digital Audio Processors WWW.LAKEPROCESSING.COM


*Please note the racing steering wheel depicted is for artistic purposes only!


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