Currently marking its 50^th anniversary, the National Theatre of Japan is state owned and operated by the Japan Arts Council. The theatre’s main responsibilities are tied to traditional Japanese theatre and performance styles, with a remit to research, educate, and stage Kabuki and Noh/Kyogen ‘low’ and ‘high’ theatre, and Bunraku puppetry performances. Alongside Gagaku (traditional court music) performances, these take place in the main building, in the 1,610-capacity Large Hall and the 590-capacity Small Hall, while the separate Engei Hall, stages smaller-scale spoken-word performances of Rakugo and Manzai.

In its anniversary year, the theatre has undertaken major refurbishment and upgrades, to continue growing its audience and attendees, and in anticipation of the 2020Tokyo Olympics. Part of this preparation has been the specification of new audio consoles for the facility – six SSL Live L500 Plus consoles.

Three of the consoles have gone into the Large Hall, split into mic input, sound effects, and final mix duties. Two consoles are in the Small hall – one for mic inputs and the other for both sound effects and final mix. The sixth console is ‘floating’ – used around the facility for both sound reinforcement and recording.

It was important that the consoles be as transparent as possible, to avoid drawing attention to the use of artificial reinforcement. The L500’s SuperAnalogue mic amp technology combined with 96kHz operation and SSL signal processing was deemed ideal for this. In addition, limited space in the theatre’s Machine Room meant that having everything including the processing hardware housed inside the console rather than in external racks was especially convenient.

SSL’s Live consoles are powered by Tempest, a fourth-generation digital audio platform developed for live environment applications. The high-capacity signal processing engine at the heart of Tempest uses SSL’s Optimal Core Processing (OCP) to deliver highly efficient and reliable performance with minimal latency.

Makoto Ishii, Head of the Technical Division of the National Theatre reports: ‘L500 Plus is working as we expected. It has very flexible routing features for inputs and outputs, and the Stem bus-type and output Matrix are very useful.’