Portraying the life of Nigerian political activist and musician Fela Kuti had required the audience to be immersed in a soundfield as part of the adventurous production--but at the National he decided to go a step further.
The opportunity came when the National's sound operations manager, Borneo Brown, and assistants, Matt Berry and Ed Ferguson, requisitioned a 42-fader, custom-configured Studer Vista 5 digital console for the production.
"I had hoped to have used this desk for the Broadway production--but for various reasons it didn't happen," said Kaplowitz. Of the advanced feature set offered by the Vista 5, the highlight--as far as this show is concerned--is the Virtual Sound Panning (VSP) feature. Offering phase and time delay, this is assigned to the 11-piece band (over 25 channels), to provide panning and a wide stereo image without level shifts.
As a result, the band audio image moves subtly. "They are on moving trucks which go back and forward and we can psycho-acoustically connect the image of the band without sacrificing gain in the whole room. It's a big bonus having the VSP as we missed a lot of this on Broadway."
Kaplowitz admits that the shape of the National's auditorium had a strong impact on the mix. "This is a very different space--with 150-degree audience seating rather than a proscenium as on Broadway, where we used a runway to break up the proscenium space. At the National we are more 'in the house' and the VSP helps us bring the audience right into the show.
"We have ended up using a different output configuration--the flexible DSP allowed us to reconfigure the desk during our prep, and we were also able to use the flexibility of the DSP chips to add the Virtual Surround Panning.
"We use TiMax 2, utilising its crosspoint delay/gain matrix, to create various 'zones' in the house. Each of those zones is a zero point for the entire sound system, including the surrounds. The performers are placed in those zones, using the multitrack busses on the Vista 5 in conjunction with TiMax 2's Tracker system. These zones allow us the ability to fulfill Bill's request to localize the voices to their sources, while simultaneously allowing me to enfold the entire audience in the events onstage."
(Jim Evans)
