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Stratford’s Festival Theatre Upgrades to Complete Meyer Sound Matrix3 and CueConsole System
Prophetically named after Shakespeare’s birthplace, the small city of Stratford, Ontario today hosts the largest classical repertory theatre in North America. Offering theatrical fare rivaling the best of New York and Shakespeare’s Stratford, the Stratford Festival of Canada hosts an annual audience of 600,000 over the course of eight months. Fourteen productions were staged this year, with plays by the Bard of Avon taking top billing, along with Broadway-style musicals that added depth and variety to the repertoire. To deliver the renowned classics to the Festival patrons, more than 80 Meyer Sound loudspeakers were used, along with Matrix3 audio show control systems and a fully integrated LCS Series CueConsole control system, which was recently installed in the largest venue at the Festival, the 1,826-seat Festival Theatre.
Stratford’s Festival Theatre presents a daunting challenge to audio designers for several reasons. First, there’s the architecture: the semicircular auditorium wraps around a deep thrust stage, requiring a full 180 degrees of coverage at orchestra and balcony levels. And with four plays running in the repertory, usually with 11 performances weekly, the audio system must be reconfigured once and often twice daily. Further complicating matters are the full orchestra and up to 30 channels of wireless microphones used in the Broadway-style productions staged in the recent seasons.
A key proponent of the LCS Series solution was resident sound designer Peter McBoyle, a 12-year veteran of the Festival. “Having just one system for all playback, mixing, signal processing, and output matrixing has proven enormously helpful,” he claims. “Before, all mics for the musical were mixed separately on the analog FOH console and then sent into the Matrix3 units. Now it’s so much simpler dealing with one seamlessly integrated system.”
The new CueConsole control package at Festival Theatre is linked via computer network to eight Matrix3 processors housed in three separate locations. High-resolution digital audio signals shuttle among the processors over fiber optic links, allowing the eight processors to function as if they resided in the same rack. The Matrix3 system is deployed for integrated and computer-controlled sound effects playback, signal processing and output matrixing.
The CueConsole system is connected to more than 50 Meyer Sound loudspeakers, including 18 MM-4 miniature wide-range loudspeakers for front fill, foldback and stage effects, and five self-powered UPA-1P compact wide-coverage loudspeakers: three overhead center, and two added at stage left and right for Oklahoma!. Also used are legacy loudspeakers that have served reliably for more than a decade: UPA-1C loudspeakers for main left/right “proscenium” systems, UPM-1 and UPM-2 reinforcement loudspeakers for over-balcony delays and the balcony rail, and USW-1 subwoofers for low end.
According to Scott Matthews, chief audio engineer for the theatre, the move to a Matrix3 system with CueConsole control surface not only simplified operations, but also produced a noticeable sonic improvement. “We lost miles and miles of copper wire,” he notes. “Our longest mic line has been cut from over 400 feet to under 75. Also, we eliminated external processing devices with numerous A-D and D-A conversions. When we first fired up the system, we heard the improvement immediately.”
Designing the new system required months of collaborative effort among McBoyle, Matthews, and David Campbell, assistant technical director for the Stratford Festival. Chris Shaw, chief audio engineer for the 1072-seat Avon Theatre also contributed, as the LCS Series components are often shared by two venues depending on varying production requirements.
Assistant technical director David Campbell is impressed with the increased efficiency afforded by the new system at Festival. “The total configurability is just astounding,” he stresses. “With this year’s production of Oklahoma!, we were weeks ahead of the game when we first went into the auditorium.”
As a sound designer, McBoyle revels in both the precision and flexibility afforded by having all mixing, signal processing, and output delays integrated into a single system. “Most of the limitations I had to deal with before are now gone,” he states. “Before, I would have to accept the lowest common denominator for a particular scenario, particularly with the musicals. Now I can optimize every microphone and every loudspeaker output for every cue of the show. The difference in gain before feedback is striking.”
As an example McBoyle cites the level of control for the different audio responses of a hairline-placed lavaliere microphone when a wide-brimmed hat was removed or replaced by the actor: “In our production of Oklahoma!, cowboy Curly wears two different hats with two different acoustical signatures. With the control offered by CueConsole, I could EQ for no hat, hat one, and hat two, and then immediately recall the EQ right where I need it.”
“I like the fact that everything is completely hands-on,” adds Matthews, who mixes many of the shows at the Festival Theatre. “I have instant access to everything.”
In addition to the dramatically improved capabilities compared to the old analog mixing console, the compact CueConsole also takes considerably less space, which reaped immediate financial benefits. “We reclaimed three or four prime seats,” observes Matthews. “And that translates into tens of thousands of dollars of additional income this season alone.”
Stratford Festival’s Avon Theatre and Tom Patterson Theatre also rely on Meyer Sound LCS Series and loudspeaker systems. The Avon Theatre setup includes four Matrix3 processors plus a basic CueConsole control surface, while two Matrix3 processors handle effects playback at the Tom Patterson Theatre. The main proscenium loudspeakers at the Avon include self-powered UPA-1P compact wide-coverage and UPA-2P compact narrow-coverage loudspeakers; and legacy products including UPM-1, UPA-1C and USW-1 cabinets fulfill overhead, delay and sub-bass requirements. In the 480-seat Tom Patterson Theatre, six UPA-1C loudspeakers are deployed in a center cluster over the elongated runway thrust stage.
Having just concluded the 55th festival, Stratford Festival is now planning for its return in 2008, with an impressive lineup of celebrated plays like Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Cabaret, and many more.
3rd January 2008
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