The play, directed by actor/director John Turturro and penned by Ethan Coen, Elaine May and Woody Allen, consists of three one-act plays that deal with the topic of family relationships. As each play is essentially dialogue-driven, clarity is of great importance for the success of the production. Mini-COM.P.A.S.S., with its Double Parabolic Reflective Wave Guide (DPRWG) technology and integrated power amplifiers, allows for extremely directed high frequencies, ensuring intelligibility throughout the main audience areas, says the company.
"The challenge for designing the audio system was finding a speaker/amplifier system capable of capturing the articulation and emotions of the dialogue and delivering it to the audience," says Carl Casella, the sound designer for Relatively Speaking. "Outline Mini-COM.P.A.S.S., which is comprised of four 5-inch loudspeakers for low/mid range and two 1.75-inch compression drivers on the proprietary DPRWG wave guide, lends itself perfectly to vocal articulation, whether sung or spoken. Using Mini-COM.P.A.S.S. allows the audience to relax and get involved with the play, rather than straining to hear or understand the dialogue."
Mini-COM.P.A.S.S. is capable of up to 150 degrees of coverage, but the ideal for the Brookes-Atkinson Theater is 120 degrees on all the different cabinets, according to Outline's open-array 3D prediction software. A single array of seven cabinets does the job. The top of the array consists of four cabinets covering the balcony area with a spacer break at the bottom. Three more cabinets are hung below to cover the main seating area. The software accurately provided a map of the coverage that the loudspeakers should provide and the array was set accordingly.
"Mini-COM.P.A.S.S. is a self-powered, steerable loudspeaker that goes from 60 to 150 degrees of coverage in 15-degree increments, symmetrically or asymmetrically, so it can be used in a very wide range of applications," continues Casella. "I've used the Mini-COM.P.A.S.S. in a number of different situations, from outdoor portable stage applications for music, to college commencements and other applications, where the ability to vary the high frequency pattern from loudspeaker to loudspeaker maximized the sound quality for each project."
(Jim Evans)
