The musical was born in a disused Chicago tram shed in 1971 as an experimental amateur show and by 1979 it was the longest-running show on Broadway and a hit movie. The Wellington Musical Theatre version met the challenge with a PA comprising ElectroVoice loudspeaker cabinets and M-Audio Monitors handled the band foldback along with the XTA processing.
XTA's SiDD (Seriously Intelligent Digital Dynamics) is already assisting in London's West End and on Broadway, but the multiband D2 Dynamic EQ was used on the Christchurch job. Systems and theatre engineer, Glen Ruske of Redd, comments: "The XTA D2 is fantastic for theatre work. It works very well with the transition of dialogue, where you need to have a bit of bite for diction, and then into songs which need to be a bit more mellow. The D2 is the perfect tool for the job, and it works in such invisible way. During rehearsal, I looked at the D2 and it was doing 9dB of compression, and it just sounded quiet - not sucked out, just quiet, plus its very simple to use - I still haven't looked at the manual!"
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
