Audio puzzle solved for Wheel of Fortune
For 25 years now, Wheel of Fortune has spun its way into American homes, making itself a dinnertime ritual for millions of viewers. Taking to the road in this, its silver anniversary season, the No. 1 syndicated series setup shop at Chicago's Navy Pier to tape three weeks of shows.
Whether witnessed live in the cavernous confines of Navy Pier's Festival Hall with thousands of other fans, or on a small TV in your mom's kitchen, Wheel of Fortune is a medley of sound that oftentimes transcends its sights. The ratcheting rumble of the wheel itself rivets our attention, of course, while the dulcet tone of a correct consonant lends added inspiration to the lovely Vanna White's estimated 720 handclaps per episode. Announcer Charlie O'Donnell's voice is unmistakable, and the promising chant of “Big money! Big money!” could even lure a self-denying ascetic like the Dali Lama into a moment of prize-winning consciousness.
Breathing life into these and other sounds for Wheel of Fortune in Chicago was a job entrusted to the Production Resource Group (PRG/Audio). With its efforts guided by System Designer Bill Daly from the Sun Valley, Calif., office — a man with 12 seasons of road experience on the show under his belt — the PRG audio production team led by PRG/Orlando System Engineer Alan Henig found itself faced with a new set of challenges on the Navy Pier set: Integrating varied system characteristics into one cohesive sound source.
Wide and Shallow
Daly waved an outstretched arm across a broad sweep of the Festival Hall seating area while the set was still under construction. "Our area of coverage is a good 170 feet wide. Compounding the problems associated with the width of this room is a dilemma unique to live sound for television on location like this: If what we're doing in the house bleeds into the remote truck taping the show, the program will sound hollow when it airs. Therefore, our system has to have incredibly precise focus and directivity. At the same time, I have the somewhat paradoxical assignment to keep my levels low, while still insuring that everyone can hear everything quite intelligibly. We can't just apologize and make it all better if host Pat Sajak cracks a joke and the audience doesn't laugh because they can't hear him."
Daly's search for a solution led him to the door of longtime friend and one-time partner Karl Cira, founder and owner of KC Audio in Oak Lawn, Ill. Drawing from his own inventory and resources, Cira, with the help of KC Audio Systems Engineer Scott Flaws, assembled an assortment of loudspeakers and the necessary processing and amplification they felt would meet the unique requirements of the job. Based around a pair of flown arrays, each incorporating eight WideLine-10 enclosures provided by QSC Audio, the system elements relied upon processing and amplification from the Costa Mesa, Calif. manufacturer as well.
"Karl made a point of telling me that I had to hear these loudspeakers," Daly says, recounting how the WideLine portion of his system evolved. "He and I have both been doing this since 1971, and generally speaking, he isn't impressed by anything. We've both seen everyone's products come and go. So when he said I had to hear these WideLine-10s, it got my attention right away, because it takes quite a bit for him to give anything a thumbs-up. The first thing I noticed when I listened was that these cabinets were indeed really wide in coverage — 140 degrees to be exact. Second was their musicality. Oftentimes, linear arrays can throw far but at the expense of warmth and fullness. The waveguide QSC uses for the high-end had the definition I needed, and the directivity was exact. The arrays went right where you aimed them and nowhere else."
“I Would Like To Buy a Q…”
Onsite, Scott Flaws helped guide the installation of the WideLine arrays, which were suspended above the set downstage of the puzzle board and wheel at the front of the seating area. Drawing from only three racks of power and processing, the enclosures were fueled by PowerLight 3 Series amplifiers including PL380s and PL340s. Processing was managed in its entirety by QSC's BASIS 922az units.
"In each of our three racks were a pair of PL380s and a single PL340," Flaws divulged, offering details of the equipment manifest. "A single BASIS 922az saw duty in each as well, and then we kept a couple of PowerLight 6.0s at hand as a backup too. 27,000 watts were available at each rack, and the rig was mapped into four zones to facilitate different shading as required."
Out front, Bill Daly managed house mixing chores from behind a Yamaha M7CL digital console, a board he describes as very basic, but outfitted with everything he needed onboard in a package that is quick and intuitive to use. Control for an elaborate monitor setup onstage originated at Daly's FOH desk, but traveled to a backstage mixer stashed discreetly in “ampland.” Ultra-compact, powered Fostex 6301 loudspeakers were the main components scattered in monitor locations both onstage for mix minuses and program feeds to all the technical departments.
With the WideLine-10 arrays more than amply meeting Daly's requirements for directivity, wide-angle coverage and dynamic range performance running the gamut from the whisper of an inside joke to the ebullient scream of a grand-prize winner, system delay was worked out in a fashion equally unique to the application using the wheel itself and Pat Sajak's position onstage as the anchors for all imaging. Noting that all the delay could have been precisely timed and it just wouldn't feel right, Daly opted instead to keep moving his delay times from his zero points upstage until a desired equilibrium was reached.
The pace of a taping of Wheel either in its home studio back in Culver City, Calif., or anywhere on the road is rapid. Shows are taped in 30 minutes at a rate of five per day with a change of audiences after a meal break and the taping of the third show. As a result, Daly says one major goal of mixing sound for the house is to simply hang on and follow the action.
"The most important thing for me, without question, is to follow what's happening onstage very carefully," he confides. "It would be very easy for me to get distracted and caught up in the game. Like everyone else, I want to solve the puzzle too, but I have to remain professionally detached from it all. As far as my mix is concerned, and how I want to define the sound, I always strive to give the audiences on the road what they've come to expect of the show at home. There may be thousands of others around each member of the crowd, but the audio experience has to be as personal as if they were sitting in their own living rooms. Pat has to sound like Pat, Charlie like Charlie, and so on. If we're successful on a contextual level, the experience live will be just like stepping into the sound field emanating from your own television. With the right components and mindful attention, this small-screen reality directly translates to a big stage, and the true character of the show remains intact."
