London based Orbital Sound, specialists in the supply and design of sound systems for theatre and musical productions, have worked closely with the New Skakespeare Company at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park for six years.

For the musical production of the Broadway version of Pirates of Penzance, Orbital supplied a sound system to augment the newly installed system used for the other shows running as part of this season's repertoire. This spectacular production required a complex audio configuration as designed by Orbital's Simon Whitehorn who has worked with the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre for 13 years.

The permanent loudspeaker system installed is d&b, consisting of a combination of C6s, E3s and a pair of E18 sub bass cabinets. For this production Orbital supplied 10 additional E3s for frontfills, as well as additional speakers for foldback and sound effects.

Orbital supplied a 40 channel Amek Recall desk with virtual dynamics as the main control and a Yamaha O3D as a sub-mixer for the drum kit. The system processing is handled by two BSS Soundweb 9088. As the band is situated at the side of the stage and not in a conventional orchestra pit, different delay times were required for the vocals and the band. The Soundweb modules allows for this to be easily achieved which was invaluable as the budget did not allow for seperate vocal and band loudspeaker systems. The reverb units used are Lexicon PCM91, TC Electronic M3000 and a Yamaha SPX 1000. All the dynamics processing is handled by the Virtual Dynamics controls in every module of the Amek Recall.