An import of the Edinburgh military pageant which has also used TiMax for the last six years, the Basel Tattoo is staged in the open air in front of the 18th century Kaserne Hof barracks next to the Rhine. The performers are spread out over a 70m x 25m parade arena surrounded by audience seating on three sides.
Specified by Swiss sound designer Thomas Strebel, a 16-input 24-output TiMax Rack System was fed from eight groups of a Yamaha PM5D console which received up to 32 radio mics plus CD and harddisk playback sources for various dance troupes. Another PM5D was located in the temporary Basel Tattoo Studios built under the main grandstand to multi-track the show to Pyramix for 5.1 DVD release and also to provide stereo feeds for live TV and radio broadcasts.
Out Board's Dave Haydon was on site to provide TiMax setup and programming support to Strebel's audiopool crew at front-of-house who comprised Stefan Bingeli operating TiMax and Florens Meury running the console.
Using a similar TiMax show configuration as for the 2006 production, Dave Haydon employed a wireless tablet PC to help with walkabout Image Definition delay programming across a dozen Kling and Freitag clusters on poles in front of the side-seating audience plus four individual channels of d&b J8 line arrays on the ground in front of the main VIP stadium seating.
There were also six separate K&F B5 sub bass channels spread out under the seating areas, all separately delayed back to 10 TiMax Image Definition locations across the arena. This was particularly important to cater for several acts who integrated an amplified rock band and drummer into their sets. The most outstanding of these has to be the Coldstream Guards whose trumpeter skilfully managed to hit the Penny Lane solo's infamous high notes every night during the band's Beatles medley.
The TiMax system at this years Tattoo also featured Out Board's new smooth panning firmware algorithms, which enhance the transparency of the proprietary TiMax delay-panning process. Dave Haydon comments: "This year we miked the Basel Top Secret Drums Corps' to beef up the multiple bass drums which play a constant droning tune to underpin the unbelievably complex snare drum rhythms. We tracked them with about five or six sequential cues and even though they run around all over the arena you just couldn't tell they were amplified."
(Jim Evans)
