A well-established UK technical services rental company for sound and video projects for large-scale musical theatre productions and corporate events, Stage Sound Services (SSS) has recently invested in Sennheiser’s Digital 6000 microphone system.

‘We’ve been working with Sennheiser from the very start of the company, starting out with their wired microphones,’ says SSS Commercial Manager, James Lewis. ‘A large proportion of our business is professional theatre, from small plays to full-scale musicals and, in recent years, our stock of Sennheiser and Neumann wired microphones has increased dramatically to accommodate these shows. 

‘Last year we started to add Sennheiser wireless into our rental stock, with the purchase of 32 channels of its SK 5212 system for the Funny Girl UK tour. Sennheiser is on many specs, so it wasn’t a hard decision to make.’

SSS’s main motive for investing in Digital 6000, which offers the outstanding audio quality of its flagship Digital 9000 in a two-channel receiver, is the future opportunities it will provide for sub-hire and its rider/specification friendliness.

‘Kevin Gwyther-Brown and Andy Lilywhite from Sennheiser came down to give our guys and the show’s crew an insight into the features of the Digital 6000 system, along with the monitoring and scanning functions that they need to use when on the road with the show,’ Lewis recounts. ‘Sennheiser’s Tim Sherratt also gave us a very insightful overview session about Digital 6000 and digital radios, which answered lots of questions that we didn’t know we had. It was very informative.’

He adds that the sound quality was also a major factor, as well as the system’s environmental credentials: ‘As with most companies, we are keen on green energy, so the rechargeable battery and the neatness of the charging system is also important to us.’

Dan Samson, sound designer for Cilla and Cabaret, had used digital radio microphone systems on a number of previous shows and specified them again for both productions, where SSS’s Digital 6000 systems were immediately put to work.

‘The timing of Cilla and Cabaret coincided with Digital 6000 coming on to the market,’ Lewis explains. ’The system is based on proven technology in the Digital 9000 system, so any questions about reliability, RF performance, or audio quality etc, were quickly answered. Cilla has more than 45 channels of RF including IEMs, so the licensing cost of touring that particular show also played a major part in the decision.’

By using Digital 6000, which is intermodulation-free and therefore allows frequencies to be placed in an equidistant grid, SSS is able to get these 45 channels of RF into just three TV channels. ‘The shows have only just loaded in, so we haven’t tested them out on an extensive run,’ Lewis concludes. ‘But they are performing well so far and everyone is very pleased with them.’