KV2 Audio in re-imagined West Side Story
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“As a theatre, the Manchester Royal Exchange is brilliant because it’s so intimate,” says Brooker. “There are 700 seats, but not one is further than 9m away from the stage, so it’s a wonderful experience for audiences. However, it’s a very challenging venue in which to deliver good sound, especially for a musical, and particularly when the majority of the audience already knows every word and every note of every song.”
Brooker has been using KV2 Audio loudspeakers almost exclusively since 2013. “I simply can’t imagine how I could have achieved the same results using anything else,” he says. “One of the biggest issues in the Royal Exchange is that you’re extremely limited as to where you can put speakers, so as a designer it helps to know that the tools at your disposal are the very best and that you’re used to using them.”
Brooker’s design is based on concentric rings of loudspeakers to serve each of the three tiers of seats that are divided into seven separate blocks all the way around the stage. There are 14 front-fills sunk around the edge of the stage floor, while the main vocal system, comprised of seven KV2 Audio EX10 compact, high-output, full range active loudspeakers, is flown in a ring above the stage. Forty-one vocal delay speakers form part of the concentric rings to supplement the front-fills and main EX10 vocal ring. “The EX10s are phenomenal speakers,” declares Brooker. “They deliver unbelievable vocal clarity and a true, natural sound. Combined with the front fill speakers, I can pull the image down to the stage to make it appear as though the sound is coming from the actors rather than the speakers above their heads.”
A ring of seven compact, low-profile ESD25s flown above the EX10s serves the upper gallery. “Space restrictions meant that we couldn’t put in another ring of EX10s – we had to have something physically smaller, so the low-profile, wide dispersion ESD25s were perfect.”
In addition to the vocal system, Brooker specified a pair of EX10s in a L/R configuration for the band system. “The band system is completely separate from the vocal system,” he explained. “We went for a L/R configuration as we decided that we’d like to have the sound of the band coming from somewhere other than the stage as is the case for the actors, and coming from a specific place, as if the band was in the theatre with the audience. The band system also acts as foldback on stage and avoids any nasty timing issues we may otherwise have encountered.”
As a complement to the main L/R system, Brooker has also provided for a comprehensive delay system based on the compact EX6 2-way active loudspeaker.
Sorcha Steele, head of sound at the Manchester Royal Exchange and associate sound designer, comments, “Having worked with Richard Brooker on four previous productions here at the Royal Exchange, it’s been great to have the opportunity to build on the successes we’ve had with his system designs. Having the opportunity to use KV2 for both the band and vocals was quite exciting and I think it really has taken the sound for the production to another level.”
(Jim Evans)
