Orbital Sound Ltd

The Woman In White

To design the sound for the Woman In White, Andrew Lloyd Webber turned to Mick Potter, following successful collaborations on Tell Me On A Sunday and Bombay Dreams.

To collect the sound Potter uses 30 Sennheiser SK5012 transmitters with 1046 receivers and his mic-of-choice, the DPA461. These, together with the sound effects from Akai S6000 samplers and an TC Electronics M6000, are marshalled at a Yamaha PM1D digital mixing console, of which Potter has long been a fan. "On this show we did consider the Cadac route, but then we heard Yamaha's new LMY2-MLAB 28 bit pre-amp and A-D card input card, which is a huge improvement sonically." A Yamaha DM2000 is also used as an additional input mixer.

"The main advantage the digital console gives is that you have so much control - you can switch foldback for each scene, or have different delay times for each performer, or change the orchestra mix, all moment by moment. You couldn't do that sort of subtle work on an analogue console.

"We also ran a complete second control surface during technical rehearsals, so that I could make changes without getting in the way of Tim Clark, who was mixing the show. And you can control everything from your laptop - that was very useful, particularly here where you're trying to tune the system and listen across four levels."

As well as Clark, Potter's team on the show includes Jo Wredden and Katie Weatherley, assistant sound designer Paul Gatehouse with Crispian Covell leading the production sound team. The complete sound system and communications system (including the BTR700 duplex radio headset network) was provided by Orbital, who also provide technical support for the installation.

Potter declares himself pleased with his work on the show - though he is quick to give credit elsewhere. "The show has a fantastic cast - Michael Crawford, Maria Friedman, Edward Petherbridge, Martin, Angela, Jill, musical supervisor Simon Lee, everyone - they're all highly talented and hugely experienced, and that makes it very easy to make it sound good." And sound good it does. The highest compliment: one could watch the show and be completely unaware of any sense of 'sound' while at the same time hearing every word and with the orchestra sounding fabulous!

Potter's brief was clear: "Andrew and Trevor wanted to be able to hear every word," the designer notes, "plus there is a big dynamic in the music. They wanted a very natural sound with a reasonably invisible system - so no huge line arrays!"

Potter was able to take advantage of a gap in the Palace Theatre's schedule to do some on-site comparisons of different loudspeakers for his dual-system, vocal/orchestra design. "For the vocal system we ended up with d&b Q7 and Q10s because they seemed to be the most natural sounding, even when being played reasonably loudly." Three of the Q7s are cantilevered back quite dramatically from an advance truss to sit on the line of the proscenium to give Potter "a position that would basically cover the whole of the audience as a central vocal cluster; these have their horns rotated to give a 70° vertical coverage." The orchestral system then consists of Meyer CQ1 and CQ2 loudspeakers along with four Meyer UPJs.

The rest of the loudspeaker system is a large, distributed array of smaller loudspeakers: 112 d&b E0 units. "We have delay and surround loudspeakers on all four levels of seating, with two sets of delays under the balcony. The surrounds are used for sound effects and also, a little, for the orchestra. It is a good theatre to work in since it was conceived as an opera house." On-stage presented more of a challenge since Dudley's hard-surfaced curved screen forms a spectacular parabolic reflector, leading to some surprising acoustic effects on stage! "We have twenty small loudspeakers in the show deck, but only the ones we really need are turned on at any given moment - just enough to give the performers some of the sound from the fourteen piece orchestra without energizing the whole space."

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To collect the sound Potter uses 30 Sennheiser SK5012 transmitters with 1046 receivers and his mic-of-choice, the DPA461. These, together with the sound effects from Akai S6000 samplers and an TC Electronics M6000, are marshalled at a Yamaha PM1D digital mixing console, of which Potter has long been a fan. "On this show we did consider the Cadac route, but then we heard Yamaha's new LMY2-MLAB 28 bit pre-amp and A-D card input card, which is a huge improvement sonically." A Yamaha DM2000 is also used as an additional input mixer.

"The main advantage the digital console gives is that you have so much control - you can switch foldback for each scene, or have different delay times for each performer, or change the orchestra mix, all moment by moment. You couldn't do that sort of subtle work on an analogue console.

"We also ran a complete second control surface during technical rehearsals, so that I could make changes without getting in the way of Tim Clark, who was mixing the show. And you can control everything from your laptop - that was very useful, particularly here where you're trying to tune the system and listen across four levels."

As well as Clark, Potter's team on the show includes Jo Wredden and Katie Weatherley, assistant sound designer Paul Gatehouse with Crispian Covell leading the production sound team. The complete sound system and communications system (including the BTR700 duplex radio headset network) was provided by Orbital, who also provide technical support for the installation.

Potter declares himself pleased with his work on the show - though he is quick to give credit elsewhere. "The show has a fantastic cast - Michael Crawford, Maria Friedman, Edward Petherbridge, Martin, Angela, Jill, musical supervisor Simon Lee, everyone - they're all highly talented and hugely experienced, and that makes it very easy to make it sound good." And sound good it does. The highest compliment: one could watch the show and be completely unaware of any sense of 'sound' while at the same time hearing every word and with the orchestra sounding fabulous!