UTRECHT, The Netherlands – Martijn Verkerk of TM Audio, a distributor for U.K.-based Out Board, worked with Out Board's Dave Haydon to provide a complete TiMax Tracker and TiMax2 SoundHub system at De Paardenkathedraal, a unique performance space used by Dutch theatre group De Utrechtse Spelen.
Danny Hoogveld, sound designer and engineer for De Utrechtse Spelen's production of Hamlet, needed a way to optimize localization of the actors' voices as they moved about the stage – and he needed it to be incorporated into the theatrical production in less than a week.
Hoogveld had started with an omnidirectional sound system design comprised of four specialty Bloomline Omniwave speakers suspended over an oval stage located between two opposite ranks of tiered audience seating. Hoogveld's idea was that if four of the specialty speakers (conceived by Dutch composer and producer Leo De Klerk) were mounted in the theatre's peaked roof, then the actors' voices would remain acoustically precedent to their amplified mics.
This would ensure the necessary vocal localization to maintain authenticity and intelligibility, as long as Hoogveld kept level-panning the mics across the speakers to provide a moving anchor that would correspond to the actors' positions onstage below.
It didn't take long trying to track the actors manually with pan-pots on the Midas Venice desk before Hoogveld realized he needed help. That's when he contacted Verkerk at TM Audio for a Friday afternoon chat.
Soon afterward, Haydon from Out Board was busy preparing a four-sensor TiMax Tracker performer tracking system and a TiMax SoundHub R16 matrix processor to dynamically process the mic signals.
The gear accompanied Haydon, courtesy of easyJet excess baggage, and Haydon and Verkerk had it all installed for the show's opening night on the following Wednesday.
The new TiMax Tracker system is now permanently installed in the venue, which converted to a theatre after its first use as a horse riding facility for Utrecht University. (The "cathedral" reference in the venue's name comes from the Gothic design of its windows).
For more information, please visit www.outboard.co.uk.
