Reportages

PLAYING FOR HER MAJESTY

ARTICLE COURTESY OF PRO AUDIO ASIA MAGAZINE - JULY / AUG 2003

(AX88 / RESOLUTION 2 / INFRABASS INSTALLATION)

above: the stunning interior of the refurbished
her Majesty's theatre in Ballerat, Melbourne.

Built at the height of the Australian gold rush in 1874, Her Majesty's Theatre, Ballarat, lies just outside the modern city of Melbourne. Today the beautiful old theatre is an historically important building and a heavily over-worked regional theatre. In March 2002 Greg Ginger, managing director of Australian contractor Outlook Communications, had a meeting with Stuart McKellar, the theatre's technical operations manager, to discuss the sound requirements for a production of Les Miserables to be staged by one of the ;local theatre companies. During the meeting McKellar indicated that the theatre was proposing to upgrade its speaker system at the end of the year. 'Before this install we had a system that didn't cut much mustard,' he says. 'There were too many holes in the theatre where no sound was heard. Another problem was if you sat in front of the old boxes you would be blown away, while at the back hear nothing. The theatre had had a lot of complaints about the sound by pro and amateur productions and most shows would bring in a complete system. So one of my first jobs as technical operations manager was to improve this, not only to deliver good quality sound but make it cheaper for local and touring shows alike. My goals were to install a system that would rival the large city venues, to cover the whole auditorium and to make it so that shows would only have to bring their radio mics's

With the contract for Les Miserables secure, the two talked further about improving the venue's sound system and Ginger offered to set up a Funktion-One system for the season as a dry run for a permanent installation. 'During the production, my production manager Don Eickhoff - who was mixing the Les Miserables production - set aside a day to show Stuart and the Her Majesty's crew how the system worked,' says Ginger. 'Each of the crew also brought along a recorded music piece and they were all surprised at how they heard things on the recording which they had never heard before.'

With two other companies tendering for the job, McKellar asked Ginger to put forward a proposal to purchase the system - along with accessories that were unsuited to the Les Miserables production due to the lack of rigging points. After the proposal evaluation process and negotiations with the City of Ballarat and Arts Victoria funding bodies, Ginger was told that Outlook Communications had won through. He wasted no time in completing the installation design, 'Outlook Communications installed a demonstration system for the venue management utilizing Funktion-One equipment from its own rental inventory,' says John O'Donnell of Funktion-One Australia. 'The results were excellent, with the system easily out-performing all other hopefuls.'

Funktion-One founder Tony Andrews flew out from the company's UK HQ to make a preliminary visit and approve the design for the installation, and the installation team of Tim Leek, Martin Tyrrell and Ginger himself set to work with the assistance of theatre's technical staff. Project assistance was provided by O'Donnell.

The auditorium is split into three levels, with the under-balcony areas being quite deep, while the seating on the lower balcony wraps around almost to the proscenium. The brief was to provide a system that was capable of producing very high quality reinforcement for musical theatre, as well as high level output for rock 'n' roll shows. It became apparent that each of the levels of the theatre required a separate system, and each of these three systems required separate amplification. To this end, two Funktion-One Resolution 2 full-range enclosures were chosen to cover each level, with supplementary sub-bass for the stalls, and under-balcony and front fill speakers for the shadowed areas. A centre speaker - a Funktion-One AX88 - was added to the design to help image the sound to the stage.

The full installation included Resolution 2 left and right speakers for each of the three levels of the auditorium, Infrabass subs for left and right, JBL Control 1 under balcony fill speakers on all three levels (four per level), four more Control 1s and an AX881 for front fill. Amplification is provided by new MC2 T-1000s, T-1500 and T-2000 amplifiers. 'MC2 amplifiers were chosen to drive the entire system based on their high quality, transparent sound, high reliability and their compatibility with the Funktion-One range of products,' says John O'Donnell. 'The system has been configured to use one channel of both a T1500 and a T1000 to drive each Resolution 2, with T2000 amplifiers driving the Infrabass units. The T1500, single channel, is driving the AX-88, while the fill speakers are powered by T1000 amplifiers.' System control is through three BSS Minidrive FDS 336 processors and two BSS 9088 LL Soundwebs.

'One problem was as the theatre has considerable historical significance the look of the system is extremely important,' says Ginger. 'The Funktion-One factory stepped in and took on the project to colour match the boxes to the room. As the paint used in the building was all custom-made to be as close to the original colour scheme, standard paint colours were not an option. We arranged to paint some plywood as a sample with some touch-up paint at the theatre and air expressed it to London to have the factory match the finish from the sample. All I can say is the finish is stunning - even the speaker scrims and fibre-glass mouldings match perfectly.'

'Another problem came in the way of cabling,' says McKellar. 'The project became bigger as it went along, going from just putting new speakers, to relocating all the outlets to a central patchbay, running multicores to and from the desk, adding new points both fold back and mic lines, and splitting duplicate lines to singles. The cabling took nearly two weeks to complete, drilling holes in two-foot thick walls crawling in spaces that children could get into - but we did it - cutting manholes in dressing room roofs and then sealing and painting them back up.' 'We needed to run some cabling through some walls,' adds Ginger, 'and many of the walls were 600mm think, almost solid Bluestone. But we managed to run cables to all the positions we needed and most of them are out of view,' Canare cabling and Neutrik connectors were used throughout the job.

The installation was completed in the last week of January. John Newsham, co-designer and co-founder of Funktion Research was on hand to tune the system. 'Many local patrons of the theatre who say Les Miserables came and congratulated Don at the sound desk saying that it was the best sound they had heard in the venue,' says Ginger of the completed installation. 'We can't take all the credit, the talent in the production was pretty good also…''

'There are a lot of people to thank who worked together on this project,' says McKellar 'Funktion-One and John O'Donnell were there the whole way through the process. My staff crawled their way though the floor and little spaces. Brett Edginton, my second, took on the project management, while Mark at Computer Update in Melbourne sourced the computers for us. And finally, thanks to Greg Ginger and his team - their workmanship and support is above and beyond the call of duty.

'I can't say enough about this company who installed the system other than thank you. I truly believe that this is one of the best installed systems in Australia. Sitting in the stalls listening to La Boheme was like hearing it live; you heard every breath taken it was just stunning.'

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