Steve Alexander, Head of Audio at the Empire Theatre, was the Sound Designer/Operator for their recent production of We Will Rock You.
Audio Equipment Info:
- 1 x Midas PROX (FOH)
- 1 x Midas PRO1 (Band Monitors)
- 7 x iPads with wired ethernet for band local IEM’s
- 38 x Shure ULX-D
- 18 x Sennheiser SL1 headsets
- 14 x DPA D:fine headsets
- 4 x ULX-D Handhelds
- 1 x Qlab Playback
- 1 x DiGiGrid MGB interface for waves plugins.
Quick Facts:
- 78 Audio inputs
- 18 Audio Outputs
- 10 Backstage Singers
- 28 channels from the seven band members plus two vocal mics for their “one-liner” during the show as they are revealed.
- 8 Channels of Qlab Playback 6 for surround wind FX and Freddie’s vocals plus Click track for the band and SMPTE for lighting and vision sync.
- 47 scenes of programming on the Midas PROX
“It was a lot to get set and ‘dialled’ in with only three rehearsals, but it all worked, and the result was, well as more than a few people put it, F#^!’n Awesome!” commented Steve. “It was my first time using the Waves plugins for a live show which was great. I had multiple inserts on the Principle, Ensemble and Booth vocal groups that used the Waves F6 Dynamic EQ and Waves Vitamin on the Principles as well. The H-Verb is better than anything I can find on the Midas so I used that along with the Kramer Tape and Doubler on the Booth vocals. To get the rhythm section sweetened up, I also inserted the SSL EQ on the Kick and Snare and had an F6 on the Bass side-chained from the kick.”
The 32 cast members all had radio headsets with a mix of the Sennheiser SL1 and DPA D:fine headsets for the show. Four handhelds were used for the Finale as by that point in the show the audience gets very vocal and the band is rocking hard, so it’s not easy to get a nice clean sound with the headsets for the Principles.
“On the two leads, we dual miked them as they hardly get off stage during the show if something goes wrong,” added Steve. “To keep it all under control there were 47 Scenes of programming in the Midas Pro-X console, with another Midas PRO-1 doing monitor duties for the band with iPads connected via ethernet. We have found that WIFI tends to fail on the Midas with more than 2/3 users but with the wired ethernet and dongles on the iPads, never had an issue.”
Steve says that all this wouldn’t have been possible without the ability to do virtual soundchecks, which allowed for console programming and processing tweaks during the day while they had no cast or band in the venue.
Past performances have made use of Tracks Live from Waves which was used for this production but it crashed on the first dress, so an alternate solution was investigated.
“We’ve used Reaper for many years for general audio editing but it’s not an easy or fast setup to do Virtual Soundchecks until I found Eclipse Record which is a dedicated setup for Reaper that makes VSC a two-click process, one click to select the number of channels to record, the other click starts recording.
“Thanks to all the Performers, Band members and crew who went above and beyond to make it all happen, You are the Champions!”
