THEATRE OF DREAMS

Musical theatre is an interesting audio discipline. There can be similarities to a touring pop/rock act. But there are also plenty in common with dramatic theatre. Traditionally you have performers wearing omnidirectional lavalier mics in their hairline, without any vocal foldback, singing along to a live band which is normally in the orchestra pit in front of the stage.

With technology improvements, sound designers like Peter Hylensky have been able to push the boundaries of what’s possible. Intelligibility has improved, SPLs in the house have been pushed harder, improved stage monitoring is possible, headworn mics and transmitter packs have got smaller, battery tech is better, and a lot more is possible with creative routing to loudspeaker systems and surround setups.

The Australian Moulin Rouge! sound design represents the absolute state of the art when tech rehearsals started in 2021. The big-ticket items include a huge complement of Meyer Sound loudspeakers and Galileo Galaxy processors; dozens of channels of Sennheiser Digital 6000 wireless; and a fully-maxed Digico Quantum 7 mixing console.

AudioTechnology met with System Sound production sound engineer, Chris Pratt, and sound associate David Greasley at the Regent Theatre in downtown Melbourne to get a closer look at the technology that makes the show tick.

MIXING THE SHOW

So what’s it like mixing a full-throttle musical theatre show like Moulin Rouge! ?

Chris Pratt: “Intense. The first 20 minutes, especially, are absolutely relentless. There’s a lot of manual mixing of the main vocals and getting the band balance just right. I’ll also be hitting sound effects. Some of the effects are linked to visual cues so they can’t all be trigged by QLab. You need to know the show to get it right. And, being theatre, you’re not going to get the exact same performance every night – you need to stay alert. If you miss a cue, then there’s nowhere to hide — everyone will know about it.”

As you can imagine, the show is heavily snapshotted.

Chris Pratt: “The snapshots will be changing band mix assignment on your DCAs; changing reverb sends; making EQ changes, that sort of thing. The automation may be rebalancing the ensemble for you as a starting point but it’s not changing anything to do with principal vocal levels, those are always mixed manually.”

With 30+ wireless mics, dozens of band inputs, Ableton tracks, sound effects and more, there are plenty of inputs to wrangle:

“We’re full. We run a Digico Quantum 7 with an EX-007 sidecar for front of house, connected to a couple of SD racks, a SD-Nano Rack and SD-Mini Rack backstage — and they’re all full. We’re also running an Orange Box and an Optocore DD4MR. So that’s how we get all of our inputs into our system. The Quantum 7 has been upgraded to 32-bit internal processing. But we run analogue copper to the Meyer Sound Galileo Galaxy processors. We have 11 of those which are themselves interconnected via AVB – effectively turning them into one huge crosspoint matrix – which routes audio to our Meyer Sound distributed sound system.”

LEOPARD COVERS ALL SPOTS

Musical theatre has always been a law unto itself with panning, routing and surrounds. In the past, an entirely parallel vocal system might be a feature. Ultimately, the idea has always been about doing whatever’s necessary to improve vocal intelligibility, which is tough when performers are whispering into gained-up omni mics or bellowing into each other’s lavs during a showstopper duet.

Moulin Rouge! works with a true distributed loudspeaker design. Fundamentally, the aim is to get the best, most suitable loudspeaker as near to the relevant section of the audience as possible.

Leading the charge is an array of Meyer Sound Leopard each side, 14 deep, with eight Meyer Sound 900-LFCs in a cardioid configuration flown beside it. If Moulin Rouge! was a touring pop act, this rig would probably all you need (with a bit of underbalcony fill). But Peter Hylensky’s design goes much much further. There are Meyer Sound point sources loudspeakers providing centre channel coverage, delay and fill to the whole 2500-seat theatre.

David Greasley: “I think we’ve got the whole Meyer Sound catalogue on this show! 28 Leopards, 20 x 900-LFCs [plus Chris Pratt’s personal sub! – Ed.], and a couple of 1100-LFCs. I don’t even know how many MM-4XPs… 34, I believe, mostly in the stage. We’ve got a lot of UPJuniors… there must be at least 30 of them. Then there are lot from the Meyer Sound UPM range: -2Ps, -1Ps, UPM-1s, UPM-1XPs plus UPQ-D1, -D2s and -D3s. A couple of the ULTRA-X40s… We’ve even got a few of the old MSL-4 from the ’90s, which still sound amazing! Then the surround system is the E6 and E8 from d&b.”

Chris Pratt: “The design is based around Leopard because that’s the best-sounding array box of that size. The same applies to the 900-LFC. It sounds fantastic. Running them in cardioid gives us an exceptionally even sound through the house. The other Meyer Sound point source loudspeakers were all chosen to provide the very best coverage for every seat in the house.”

David Greasley: “The UPQ loudspeakers and the MSL-4s are used to progressively keep a high-powered full-range box in the centre, and that feeds all the way through the room in order to get that full-range centre sound the show needs to maintain a hifi sound. It’s tightly plotted such that each speaker hands over at the 6dB-down points, again, to keep it smooth through the room so every person has the same experience.

“Being a distributed system, it doesn’t shift around – it’s one large cohesive audio experience.”

Chris Pratt: “And because we have so many speakers in the room, it’s very responsive to fader moves. Nothing’s running too hard, and nothing’s near its limit. You have full clarity as you push up and down in the room. If you push the master fader by 1 or 2dB you can really hear it.”

ROUTING & LOCALISATION

There’s no stereo bus out of the mixing console. The band mix is fundamentally mono and level-only. Special effects can be routed to particular loudspeakers. Vocals are treated differently. Every effort is made to place lead vocalists’ audio in the right spot, matching their stage position. There are 10 possible on-stage zones that help the audience localise the performer to their stage position. Which is all to say, Chris Pratt doesn’t use ‘panning’ to localise performers as they strut the stage, instead the localisation is performed using delay between loudspeakers, otherwise known as the Haas effect, and something theatre has been employing for a long time.

There are 30+ outputs from the console feeding the Meyer Sound Galileo Galaxy processors. The Galileo Galaxys themselves act as a crosspoint matrix for the vocals – any vocal source to any output. During the painstaking loudspeaker tuning process, the audio team set up microphones in the room and put a source loudspeaker in one of the 10 on-stage zones, then time every send of the loudspeaker system to the source. Rinse and repeat 10 times (up/down stage and left/right).

Given the show is heavily staged, the audio localisation of performers is automated, there’s no need for IR trackers or the like.

“The localisation of vocals is important for this show,” remarked Chris Pratt. “Given it’s high energy, it allows the audience to more easily connect with performers especially when there are multiple vocalists.”

STAGE MONITORING

If the loudspeaker routing seems crazy-intricate and involved, then the on-stage monitoring isn’t far behind.

First up, you’ll very rarely find in-ear monitoring on a musical theatre stage. The sense is that audience connection is everything and performers are loath to do anything that might undermine that and the interactions between fellow performers.

That said, performers still benefit from hearing vocal foldback so they can pitch properly.

But any foldback needs to be heard but not seen. Not only that, any unnecessarily stage spill will decrease intelligibility in the house mix – don’t forget, performers are using omnidirectional headworn mics, not hypercardioid handheld mics, and pick up everything.

So, you guessed it, Moulin Rouge! features one of the world’s most sophisticated foldback setups.

Concealed beneath a grille under the feet of the performers are rows of miniature Meyer Sound MM-4XP loudspeakers – six each in the first three rows and four each in the back two rows, 26 in all. Part of the snapshot automation sees foldback being routed to the correct combination of underfloor loudspeakers depending on the position of the principals and whether they’re actively singing.

Performers on the stage thrust in front of the proscenium aren’t forgotten. There are another six Meyer Sound MM-4XP.

For complete coverage, performance ladders flown on/off stage have additional sidefill-style monitors – Meyer Sound UPJuniors. And for performers side of stage, there are additional monitors. Finally, certain set pieces rolled on/off stage have monitoring onboard. Given they’re unattached, those speakers are battery powered and accept their monitor send via a wireless pack. Phew.

WIGGING OUT: WIRELESS

Musical theatre has a voracious appetite for wireless headset mics. Every performer with a singing or speaking part gets one, and it’s good practice for principal performers to wear a backup. Traditionally, the audio department would work with the wigs and wardrobe departments to place a lav mic in the hairline of the performer then run the cable underneath the costume to a well-concealed pack.

Peter Hylensky’s audio design opts for headset mics instead of hairline mics. Although the frequency response from a hairline mic is remarkably good, you’re still twice as far from the source (the mouth) than a headset mic. But headset mics have disadvantages. They’re visible and they’re hard to get a perfect fit, especially when the performer is dancing.

Peter Hylensky’s answer was to get every performer individually fitted with a bespoke headset. Each headset is made from titanium (light, strong and hypo-allergenic) and fitted high on the back of the head and over both ears. The boom extends about half way to the performer’s mouth and camouflaged to blend in with the tones of the makeup. Courtney Weaver was appointed wireless guru and oversaw all this.

Sennheiser’s MKE1 capsule was specified thanks to its diminutive form factor and its natural response. Ditto the Sennheiser 6121 transmitter pack, which is small enough to be clipped in under the women’s wigs, meaning one less cable to worry about, especially if there are costume changes.

David Greasley: “We have 38 channels of Sennheiser’s Digital 6000 Series wireless. We use the 6212 belt packs which are waterproof, which is great – previously we’d need to wrap packs in latex in order to stop sweat getting in.”

Chris Pratt: “The other thing that really saves us time is the battery life on the latest generation of wireless. We can now go a full day of technical rehearsals or a full double show day without changing batteries. It might not sound like a big deal but previously, during changeovers, when everyone else was getting a break, we’d be laboriously swapping out batteries on all the packs. Now we get a break.”

David Greasley: “The titanium headsets are great. They’re a perfect fit and don’t move. We spend a lot of time getting the distance to the mouth just right so we don’t get any breath noise while still getting maximum vocal output. So once we’ve finessed that, it’s a real advantage knowing that capsule is in the exact same spot every night.”

Chris Pratt: “Location to the mouth is a massive thing. With a boom headset, it can make a huge difference up front for intelligibility and the amount of gain you can get. It means that I’m able to mix that vocal above the band in those big moments – and there are plenty of big moments in this show. In fact, we need to hear every syllable without the breath noise.”

David Greasley: “The Sennheiser MKE1 is super-compact but it’s also such a good-sounding microphone. The principals wear two boom mics so they can’t afford to be obtrusive, but you can’t sacrifice clarity.”

Chris Pratt: “The MKE1 provides that clarity without any artificial boost in the frequency response. You’re not fighting against some kinda baked-in boost.”

David Greasley: “Combine that with the solid clarity in the high end you get from the 6000 series and it’s just so strong. It’s a solid system.”

BIG, BAWDY & BEAUTIFUL

Moulin Rouge! is big, bawdy and loud, but its success hinges on ensuring the audience hangs on for the roller coaster ride. Unlike a Les Mis or a Phantom of the Opera or even a Wicked, Moulin Rouge! doesn’t rely on traditional musical theatre principles, such as recurring musical themes. Instead, the songs are already radio favourites, known to all in the audience and are often coming hard in mashed-up medleys.

David Greasley: “Dynamic range is really important but it’s not just dynamic range that we’re giving audiences. We’re giving them the story and we’re giving them the pop songs; we’re giving them the hooks, and a lot of the music in the show. We’re not playing the same recurring song from throughout, in fact, we might be doing four different songs in quick succession or even two songs at once. So whenever there’s a change in the music, the audience needs to know straight away. We need to have that full-range HF experience in each seat in order to be able to get that message across.”

Clearly it’s doing it rather well. It’s rare to witness an audio design that doesn’t routinely accept compromises. Every technical challenge is addressed with an ingenuous technical solution. The result is an exceptional experience for audiences.

Moulin Rouge® is a registered trademark of Moulin Rouge. 

NO BRAINER

IRX One is such a lightweight/portable, no-brainer PA that I must admit, my expectations of the audio performance weren’t sky high. But as soon as I connected my phone via Bluetooth 5 I was greeted by a pleasing rendition. First things I noticed: ‘wow, hasn’t Bluetooth audio quality come a long way in the last 10 years!’; ‘the sound is quite relaxed and open – nothing is poking me in the eye’; and, ‘gosh, the sound is very even back to front and side to side’.

I had the EQ preset set to Flat and was running the system at about 50%.

I was also grateful the Bluetooth connection provides an additional input and doesn’t take up one of the three channels. Admittedly, that means you need to control the mix balance from your device but that’s no biggie.

Turning the PA up, I was pleased to hear that the sound held up right to the point of limiting. The eight-inch sub isn’t designed to fill a large space and the electronics ensure it doesn’t go flappy in places that it shouldn’t.

AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’

Next, Preshan and I plugged in a microphone, acoustic guitar and a keyboard. It’s almost impossible to get this PA to misbehave. With the AFS button activated you can sing with your mic and face hard up against the grille of the column. Admittedly, at this point you’re hearing the DSP working but it’s not feeding back. There’s sufficient gain and control to quickly achieve a nice balance of multiple inputs. We both felt that with the keys and the vocals, IRX One provided space and separation without worrying about using the onboard fixed band EQ, which isn’t intended for finessing or sculpting your sound. I did wonder if there was some hush-hush automatic gain control/compression going on to add another level of failsafe level control. 

The EQ presets are a nifty feature. I couldn’t find any reference in the manual to the EQ contours it’s imposing. In fact, I still don’t even know what ‘KTV’ on the dial stands for. No matter, they’re really a ‘suck it ’n’ see’, ‘if it makes it sound better to your ears then use it’ feature. 

The lack of any reverb in the mixer is the only thing that IRX me (sorry). For performers, this is fairly easily remedied by an in-line reverb pedal. I’m aware that JBL has done its best to ensure the mixer can be operated by anyone, and the lack of ’verb is a design choice, and probably the right one. But a one-knob Lexicon Hall would really be the icing.

PERFECT MIX?

IRX One is a remarkable PA. To say it’s ‘versatile’ is a huge understatement. In fact, I can’t think of an institution (or even household) that wouldn’t benefit from having an IRX One handy. Quite literally, anyone, can haul it out and make some noise or plug a microphone into it and, quite literally, no one, can stuff it up – it’s as foolproof as any all-in-one PA ever could be. (I guess the only ‘training’ you might need to do, is to have that awkward conversation about the difference between gain and level.)

What’s more, it sounds good. The design of the 6 x two-inch column array is highly effective and it’s easy to get a ‘produced’ sound with little effort. The 160° horizontal dispersion is very even and means non-technical operatives hardly even need to point the PA in the correct direction — everyone’s covered. That’s not to say the IRX One can break the laws of physics and produce audio miracles but for small to mediums sized spaces (or even larger spaces where only speech reproduction is required) this PA won’t disappoint.

BOX OF SURPRISES

NAS sent us two X206s loaded with the 90° x 60° rotatable horn. Chris and I set them up in the empty auditorium of a local church that’s definitely too big a space for them to fully cover on their own, but it was a chance to see how hard they’d try. My first observation was how far these compact boxes can throw. A two-position ‘HF Correction’ switch on the back of the unit offers high frequency optimisation depending on your throw distance requirements in both point source and line array applications. I could stand about 15m back without key elements in program material falling apart in the slightest. Snare drums, vocals, guitars and percussion all felt present and detailed when reasonably on axis. However, moving laterally at this kind of distance showed where the X206’s capabilities are stretched as its coverage is less predictable when more distant. Moving in closer yielded a smoother coverage from left to right across the stereo spread of the two loudspeakers set up perpendicularly. Top tip: if you’re using the X206’s on sticks, play with the rotation of each box in small increments until the horizontal coverage becomes nice and uniform at your audience’s average listening distance – I found there’s a definite sweet spot and things quickly get lumpy when you deviate from it.

The X206 is a surprisingly full-range box. Perhaps I say ‘surprisingly’ because its compactness dulled my expectations, but it sounds noticeably bigger than it looks, especially in the low end. Bass frequencies emanate with as much confidence as the midrange albeit with less articulation, but still plenty enough to not feel tinny, small or weak in a medium-sized space. Of course, the X206 can’t break the laws of physics – if you want chest-rattling doof, plug in a subwoofer. Otherwise, as far as tone goes, I found the generous dose of high mids from the horn can get fatiguing if you’re standing right in the firing line. However, this midrange presence makes vocals eminently mix-able even in a dense production. The Digipro amps supply enough depth and headroom to handle several instruments and vocals without sacrificing clarity or space.

TO THE POINT

My time with the dBTechnologies Vio X206 was spent using it as a point source box. In this configuration, the X206 is capable of a lot more than its size suggests, and perfect for anything from a solo musician playing a gig in the corner of a pub, to being the primary PA for a house of worship, or fill supplements to a larger FOH system. Conference spaces and function centres would benefit from having a couple of X206s in the store room, as would a rental or production company for setting up some last minute delays or stage fills at an outdoor event. The built-in amplification results in quick setup and the sleekness of the box means you can put it just about anywhere.

But should you wish to up the ante and cater for much larger events and audience sizes, the Vio X206 continues to put up its hand. Using it as a line array with the 100° x 15° waveguide means much further throw distances and more precise pattern control, with the full reinforcement of predictive and management software to hone the system to perfection.