It's not often that a piece of audio equipment receives a mention in the UK's most prestigious broadsheet newspaper, but during a recent interview article for one journal's respected music and culture section, specific comments were used to describe arena opera promoter Raymond Gubbay's sonic speciality. TiMax was named as a unique aspect of the show, and the feature writer argued that sound designer Bobby Aitken's decision to use it was central to achieving realistic localization of singers’ radio mics so that they actually sounded as if they were coming from the singers on stage and not from the lofty heights of the Albert Hall's PA grid, flown high to maintain sightlines from the circle seats and higher boxes.
TiMax allows unique level/delay relationships to be set up between each microphone and every loudspeaker such that sound reinforcement wavefronts reach each audience member just after the performers' acoustic vocal output, leading all listeners to localize to the talent on stage and away from the Meyer PA system flown high on the grid. Additional ‘stage lip’ d&b speakers were hidden in nine small scenery ‘rocks’ distributed around the perimeter of the stage, to assist selectively with pulling the audio images down to the action area.
All TiMax programming was handled by Out Board's Robin Whittaker, retained for rehearsals and previews by sound designer Bobby Aitken, under Out Board's sound design and production support program.
