A classical reworking of The Who’s 1979 album, Pete Townshend’s Classic Quadrophenia was staged at London’s Royal Albert Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Oriana Choir and guest singers Billy Idol, Phil Daniels and Alfie Boe. Ket to the sound reinforcement was an Allen & Heath modular iLive digital mixing system.
‘The brief was to emulate the Quadrophenia studio album, and provide clean, open sound, so I knew I had to choose iLive because it fits the bill exactly,’ says FOH engineer, Ian Barfoot. ‘It has a very open, clean sound, great audio processing, is super flexible, networkable and is customisable so I can make it work for me, rather than the other way round.
‘With an 80-strong orchestra, 90-strong choir and various guest celebrity singers, there was a lot going on, so iLive is just what I needed.’
The PA was provided by Capital Sound, and the iLive system comprised two modular iDR10 MixRacks installed on stage and linked using ACE, with an iLive-112 control surface at FOH position linked to the racks via fibre-optic and cat5 working in tandem. The system was required to handle a total of 128 inputs, with approximately 12 outputs, 16 DCAs, and providing orchestral stems to the monitor board, left and right to the main venue system, and recording feed to the mobile broadcast trucks.
‘The iLive-112 surface has a compact footprint which is ideal for theatre situations but the impressive thing is that I can run the console as a 224 strip surface, using the soft keys to recall different control strip configurations as scene recalls, greatly expanding the scope of what I see in my layers,’ says Barfoot. ‘By programming various soft keys to provide completely different control strip set-ups for different parts of the orchestra, I can instantaneously recall a different channel configuration all at the touch of a button. In fact, I could multiply up to nine times the 112 channels… but that’s madness.’
Barfoot also used a laptop running iLive Editor as an extra meter bridge so the show’s system tech could monitor the first 50 microphones, mainly the string section, where most sound reinforcement problems occur. He also used an iPad with the app as a remote control during rehearsals.
More: www.capital-sound.co.uk
More: www.allen-heath.com
