The arrival of a Euphonix System 5 console recently at the Sydney Opera house was timely given the impending "The Lord of the Rings Symphony" performance. Sound designer and mix engineer Bruce Cook said that it “would have been difficult to imagine how we could have tackled this production without it. The System 5 enabled us to design the audio system almost unrestrained” With a full symphony orchestra, massed choirs, a giant projection screen overhead, and an Oscar-winning score, ‘The Lord of the Rings Symphony’ at the Sydney Opera House was an extraordinary spectacle.
A cast of 250-plus performers included the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and the Sydney Children’s Choir, plus vocal and instrumental soloists.
The performance was accompanied by stunning Lord of the Rings imagery projected onto a giant screen above the orchestra. “A production of this magnitude inevitably demands a complex audio system,” explained Cook.
“I set out to transport the audience to what is perhaps the ultimate listening position—the middle of the orchestra—and the System 5 easily allowed me to meet this challenge. We were able to provide various feeds to a split line array sound reinforcement system with a combination of ground-stacked and flown speaker boxes, plus a spread of speakers located around the hall. We had a total of 54 inputs and in addition to the audience system, we were able to provide mixes to foldback audio monitors, and feeds for media and archival recording.
“To ensure that the dynamics, texture and transparency of the music were preserved and that we were able to accurately judge the audio balances, we chose to follow a traditional live mixing position mid theatre. The physical construction of the System 5 enabled us to simply move sections of the mixer control surface and run a fibre link back to the processing racks. This made the mix position much less intrusive to patrons than moving a whole console, which was previously our only option,” said Cook.
David Claringbold, Technical Manager, Sound and Audio Visual, Sydney Opera House, said that he has been quite impressed with the Euphonix system. “We purchased a System 5 console for the Opera Theatre in 2001. Its capabilities have proven to be just as expansive as we envisaged and it has been solidly reliable in what is probably the busiest theatre venue in the world.
“Our largest venue, the Concert Hall, hosts an incredibly diverse array of performances, ranging from symphony concerts to the biggest names in contemporary music, and, of course, extraordinary events like ‘The Lord of the Rings Symphony.’ This new System 5 enables rapid show turnaround, instant recall of settings, increased ergonomic efficiency and superb sonic performance,” said Claringbold.
“Along with the System 5 Concert Hall purchase we were also able to address the needs of the Drama Theatre, for which we chose the smaller Euphonix Max Air console.
“Now we’re in the luxurious position of having premium digital consoles in each of our three main indoor venues – the Opera Theatre, Concert Hall and Drama Theatre. Quite simply they sound incredible. Their flexibility and power combined with an extraordinary level of sonic purity mean that we are now meeting a level of expertise and production capability that was previously unattainable. As this production has shown, it’s a level of technical capability which is being increasingly requested of a venue of our calibre,” said Claringbold.
Euphonix is no stranger to “The Lord of The Rings’. In fact the three Euphonix System 5-F digital consoles at Park Road Post, a division of The Film Unit, in New Zealand, were used for ‘The Return of the King’ which subsequently won an Oscar for Sound Mixing.
