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TiMax Audio Imaging Supports Carmen in the Royal Albert Hall

Raymond Gubbay's perennial opera-in-the-round offering at London's Royal Albert Hall utilised a TiMax audio delay matrix and showcontrol system to help create authentic and transparent vocal reinforcement for principals and chorus vocals.

Directed by David Freeman and accompanied by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Peter Robinson, this was Gubbay's second Albert Hall presentation of Carmen, with sound reinforcement by Autograph and sound design by Bobby Aitken.

Bizet's romantic tragedy was translated into English to appeal to a broader opera-going audience, so mandated TiMax's unique use of multiple precedence delays to enhance intelligibility through precise vocal localisation. This “source-oriented reinforcement” technique ensures each audience member will localise to the performers' acoustic vocal output from the stage just a few milliseconds before receiving any amplified sound. The multilayered speaker arrays consisted of 16 groups of Meyer UPM's distributed overhead on a grid and 14 d&b E3's concealed under grilles in the stage itself.

The TiMax PC-based showcontrol system allowed multiple cues to be programmed in rehearsal with precedence delays preset for each performer's stage location in a given scene. As the various artists moved around the stage, sound engineer Richard Sharrat triggered the scene presets from a dedicated PC numeric keypad next to his Digico D5 console, so that TiMax stepped through its playlist cues to follow the action.

The TiMax 16x32 Rack System was rented to Autograph under Out Board's Production Support Programme, and Out Board director Robin Whittaker assisted Bobby Aitken with cue programming in rehearsals as well as setting up the multiple TiMax “image definition” precedence delay relationships on site.

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TiMax Audio Imaging Supports Carmen in the Royal Albert Hall

3rd March 2005

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