An all-star cast came together at the Charing Cross theatre for Dear World - the quirky story of a Parisian bistro, receiving its UK premiere 44 years after it was produced on Broadway. A longtime user of Sennheiser 5000 series wireless systems, sound designer Mike Walker saw the production as the ideal way to see how the 9000 series sounded.
"I wanted to try the 9000 series on a production with various vocal ranges, to hear it with excellent singers at the top of their game," he says. "The show was using fourteen 5000 series - EM1046 with SK50 transmitters. After a few weeks of letting the show settle and having got used to how it sounded, I switched to the 9000s. This would give us the opportunity to compare the two systems and really hear how the 9000s sound.
"I really like the 5000 series - of the existing Sennheiser systems I think it's the best suited to voices and I've been very happy with the quality of audio it delivers," he says. "But the 9000 series completely surpassed it - it's the best-sounding digital microphone system I've heard. Because the audio is so transparent, it highlights the way that compression circuitry in analogue systems affects the dynamic quality of the sound."
Meanwhile, at the Harold Pinter theatre, Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along is doing very brisk business, claiming to have been awarded more five star reviews than any other West End show in history. Sound designer Gareth Owen had first tried the 9000 series on last winter's production of Jack and The Beanstalk in Glasgow - the UK's only arena pantomime - but Sondheim has proved a very different challenge - one which the 9000 series has risen to just as well.
"The trouble with panto is that there are so many variables regarding how a show sounds, that you can't always tell whether differences in sound are because of different equipment or other factors," says Owen. "Merrily We Roll Along was a really good test for the system because, with Sondheim, the trick is to make the show sound unamplified, but without losing the excitement. You tend to put so much effort into making a Sondheim musical sound natural that it's easy to make it sound boring."
Owen's aim was to make the show sound 'cinematic', without it sounding amplified. To achieve this, the quality of the vocal sound was key. "Initially we tried the 9000 series out on less important characters in chorus, but we were so impressed with it that we moved the principals on to it," he says. "I knew it worked, the question was how much better was it than other systems? On Merrily we instantly realised that it's dramatically better."
The show currently features eight 9000 series systems working seamlessly alongside 24 EM3732-II systems.
It is not just in theatre that the 9000 series is impressing. The launch of the Rolls Royce Wraith - a contemporary, fastback model - saw sound designer Sebastian Frost specify a wireless system to match the car's high class pedigree.
"We did two productions, a VIP and dealer preview in London followed by the official launch at the Geneva Motor Show," he says. "My client, creative communications agency Imagination, wanted the very best possible sound quality to match the prestige of the occasions. They had used digital microphones in the past and liked the concept."
The week-long London event saw six lavalier and two handheld 9000 series mics used, with the Geneva presentation using a pair of lavaliers and a single handheld.
(Jim Evans)
