Unsurprisingly, Aladdin is the biggest production that has ever been staged at the Fredericia theatre, so theatre director, S°ren M°ller, had no hesitation in turning to Lars Frederiksen from TTA distributor and audio solutions provider, Alfa Audio, to supply both equipment and expertise on all aspects of the sound production. One of the key elements provided by Alfa Audio was a TTA Stagetracker FX system complete with QLab show control software to manage all of the sound effects for the show.
The Fredericia has earned its status as Europe's only Disney-endorsed theatre thanks to its ongoing investment in nurturing the talent required to produce high standard musical theatre. The theatre works hand-in-hand with the exclusive performing arts school, the Danish Academy of Musical Theatre. Today, around 80% of Fredericia cast members are Academy graduates. It was this privileged relationship and the fact that the Fredericia Theatre constantly seeks to raise the bar of musical performance in Denmark that attracted the attention of the Disney Corporation who were looking for a venue to host the European premiere of their new production of Aladdin.
Naturally, a production of this scale and prestige merited the best possible sound system. The Fredericia's sound designer, Tim Andreasen, worked closely with long-time collaborator, Lars Frederiksen from Alfa Audio, to design an extremely sophisticated system using state-of-the-art equipment, including the Stagetracker FX system which, on this occasion, is used exclusively to handle sound effects.
"I'm using the Stagetracker FX matrix for panning different sound effects in full surround sound, running within QLab," explained Andreasen. "I've got a multi-channel matrix, so I can have up to six different sounds moving around at once. I have some scenes where sounds emanate from the back of the venue and then move forward in real time.
"In order to create this, all I have to do is simply draw a line in QLab of where I want the sound to go, and that's it! Without Stagetracker FX, it would be a really complicated operation - I'd have to create a surround WAV file, save it, and then transfer it onto a different system in order to manipulate it to create the effect I want. Using Stagetracker FX within QLab I can design the movements in real time and then press 'save' when I'm happy with the results! I can create sound effects that fly around the room in no time at all, and the extra spaciousness it adds to the effects sounds wonderful. It's an extremely powerful tool that I am looking forward to using on other productions."
(Jim Evans)
