The main Royal Shakespeare Theatre auditorium and smaller adjacent Swan Theatre were re-opened in late 2010 following extensive re-modelling, accompanied by a substantial and ongoing investment in new production technologies. Just prior to the re-build, the nearby Courtyard Theatre was created as a temporary home for the RSC's productions. It is also the prototype for the new one-room theatre format proposed for the RST and Swan to create a more traditional Shakespearean performance area, characterised by a deep thrust stage surrounded by audience on three sides.
A recent purchase for the Courtyard's audio infrastructure has been a 48x48 TiMax2 SoundHub matrix with MADI option, partly to satisfy a need to get MADI to and from the Digico SD9 and provide onward signal distribution to what the RSC describe as their three-dimensional delay system, comprising multiple Meyer UPM-1P balcony delays, UPJ-1P's either side of the proscenium and a central UPM-1 cluster above the thrust stage. As well as signal distribution and speaker system management, another fundamental requirement for the sound department was flexible delay-matrix processing to apply variable upstage/downstage vocal localisations and band imaging.
Other generic dsp platforms under consideration needed relatively complex hook-ups between several units to achieve the same end. As head of sound Jeremy Dunn observes, "We were initially going to go with gear our crew are all familiar with, to avoid them having to learn a new bit of software. But it was always going to be a bit of a science project involving a number of separate boxes and interfaces feeding into each other"
Dunn was introduced to TiMax SoundHub by HD Pro Audio's Andy Huffer who visited, with Dave Haydon from TiMax developers Out Board, to demo the unit and in particular to convince him that its "task-based" Mac/PC software was simple and intuitive enough that there was really nothing to learn. "The big attraction was TiMax SoundHub could give us MADI, analogue and AES I/O, plus dsp all in one box" said Dunn.
After about an hour's tuition from Dave Haydon, RSC engineers were programming and auditioning TiMax image definition delay-matrix setups for the different stage zones; applying linked EQ adjustments and assigning Group zone controls to tune and trim the multichannel distributed Courtyard Theatre sound system.
As most shows currently have fewer than four or five vocal mics, the operators use aux sends on the SD9 to crossfade individual mics between TiMax inputs which are statically routed to level/delay image definitions programmed to ensure that each actor's voice is always precedent to any of the loudspeakers whenever they enter that localisation zone. "We tried it for about a month, it was a joy to use, sounded great and the price was right so we asked Andy Huffer to get us one" Dunn confirms.
The TiMax SoundHub-S48 unit was first deployed in the RSC's Courtyard Theatre, which saw its original temporary role grow into being an overflow venue during festival seasons, and which is now mooted as a potential new studio-style home for the RSC's more experimental and contemporary productions. The new TiMax has also since done service in the West End for the RSC's Bollywood-style production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Noel Coward Theatre, and Jeremy Dunn sees other units possibly being required for future roll-outs of their temporary auditoriums which regularly take up residence in London's Roundhouse and venues in New York.
(Jim Evans)
