Outdoor Opera

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Well, since I asked for more gig reports here, I figured I'd start with one of my own.

This past weekend, I was working doing the live sound for an outdoor opera concert (well, opera scenes) in Laguna Beach. The show was presented by Opera Pacific which is Orange County's opera company. For those in LA, the show was done at the amphitheater that they use during the summer for the Pagent of the Masters.

It was a fun, albeit difficult gig. My principal job was to design a show that would work for the 1500 seats and sound sound natural. For starts, we had a full orchestra (8, 6, 4, 4, 2 in the strings, triple woodwinds, 3 trumpets/trombones, Percussion, keyboard and harp), 11 principal singers and a full opera chorus.

For this job, I used one of my favorite sound companies here in LA- Hollywood Sound Systems. The system that we used was the Dynacord Cobra line array for mains, Apogee AE5 speakers for a center cluster and delays and their proprietary front fill system. Monitors were little QSC I82 speakers. It is a small speaker that is easy to hide and mount in a number of different ways. Add to that the fact that you can run 4 on a channel of an amp and it worked beautifully for this gig. Front of House was a Yamaha PM5D with an O1V96 as a sidecar. I rented a Lexicon 960 for reverb and the whole thing was clocked to a Brainstorm DCD8.

I've attached a couple photos of the venue here- to be continued...

--Ben

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Alright- so you can see where we were working.

Looking at the photo of the stage- there are 6 performance areas. The main stage (obviously), the pit for the orchestra, each nook on either side of the stage, the turntable to the left of the stage (with the vines on the back) and lastly the area above the stage with the grid over the front. The area over the stage was used for the choir- we had 24 people in the opera chorus- most of the time up above, although one piece had the men on the turntable and the women above the stage (After all, Carmen needs the men to flirt with in the Habenera).

The venue had truss towers installed between the pit and the stage off to each side. However, this made things, uh... fun because they were 80 feet apart and it meant that the main speakers had to throw over the pit. In addition, if I had a choir upstairs, the choir would need to be mic'd as well (right next to the main speakers) This is the reason for the line array- it seemed to be the most logical system for this gig.

For those that don't know the Dynacord Cobra, it is certainly worth getting to know. As I mentioned before it is small and easy to set up. The amp rack has one speakon output for each speaker stack. Of the 4 poles, 2 go to the subs and 2 go to the tops. Means that you just need to run one cable and then jump from speaker to speaker. The rack has a processor built in to take care of things and they use their own brand amplifiers. Most importantly, they sound fantastic out of the box. I didn't even need to touch the 30 band graphic for this gig. A couple dB of shaping with the parametric and that is all I needed. They also sound good for the acoustic stuff while maintaining the punch needed for the rock stuff.

Anyways, back to the gig. We decided that for this gig, a center cluster was absolutely needed, but there really wasn't anywhere to put it. We wouldn't be able to build truss to hang from- either from the ground or from the roof of the building. So up to the choir loft it went. We needed small speakers so that folks could fit behind them- hence the Apogee AE5's that we used. Not a perfect speaker, but it did the job as we needed well. For the back of the theater, we decided that a touch of delay would be needed. 2 more AE5's on each side did that well. We aimed them to fill the back corners pretty much as the line array filled in the rest well enough (at least well enough for the cheap seats )

Lastly, the front fills- Because the most expensive seats were in the front and center, we needed a transparent front fill system. the Center cluster was aimed to fill these seats and the mix gave them mostly vocals in these speakers. The front fills are made by Billy Jenkins who works at Hollywood Sound. They can mount on a stage wall and not fall off (There is a stage weight in the hanger). There is also 3 positions for speakon connection and a cable trough under the hanger. They fire out about 160 degrees wide and 20 degrees high. I've used them firing over a pit with omnidirectional mics without feedback issues in the past and they sound great. We positioned 2 of the speakers on the pit wall and the other two on the ground aimed up a bit. The front wall of the pit (as you can see) angled down which made mounting there nearly impossible. The front fills were in stereo as well to allow for localization of sound for those front seats. In other words, I didn't want cello mics going to the left side. The level was kept low and you'd never know they were on until they were turned off and you couldn't hear.

More pictures now... More to come...

-Ben

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So now you see the system and what we were dealing with....

Obviously, the live aspect presents a few fun issues for micing a performance like this. In an acoustic hall, a performance like this has no major limits. However, placing singers (and really musicians) in the hall with speakers firing around them makes for a major difference in approach.

The way we approached it was LOTS of mics. I think we ended up with something like 60+ microphones in use for this job.

First the easy part- the vocalists. Each principal was placed on a wireless headset mic. We used the relatively new high-end Shure wireless system. We had 14 channels there- the new computer interface and IR ports for it worked great when we had to retune to deal with interference. To make the reception work on all these different stage areas, we placed a paddle (antenna) in the front of the pit facing the stage and a second was backstage and was manually moved to compensate for turntable versus stage location. That seemed to work best when dealing with locations, nodal interference, etc... We used DPA headsets on all the singers save one whose head didn't fit in it. For him, we used a Countryman E6 (which doesn't go around the back of the head). We also had one singer for one piece on a handheld wireless mic with a Beta 87 head on it as he went into the middle of the audience for his aria (sorry- no omnis out there).

The choir had 8 mics total. In the "loft," we placed 6 microphones- all omnis. We set it up as 2 L-C-R rigs for each side of the center cluster. In the mix, they were layered to give the choir more of an ensemble feel. Each L-R were DPA 4006s and the centers were DPA4061s. The 4006s were mounted with clamps and the 4061s were hanging. We had a couple voices stick out, but mostly it sounded pretty good. On the turntable, we placed a mic on either side of the stairs. Here, we used the DPA compact cardiods.

One of the issues with the turntable was that it was right at the edge of the throw of the left side main cluster. Meant that everything needed to be close for gain before feedback issues. Fortunately, the throw didn't reach the seats until about the 6th or 7th row so we could make it work when singers went in front of the pit. For those pieces, I just kept the sends to the front fills low.

The orchestra was heavily mic'd. The strings each had a DPA 4061, each on a y-cable to sum to half the channels. Between the choir and the violins, I used the O1V96 to sum those mics to smaller numbers of channels. Each wind section had 2 mics- usually summed to a single channel. Flutes were KM140, Oboes were KSM32, Clarinet M930 (Gefell- not beyer), Bassoon KM84, Horns MD441 behind, Brass section- 2 KSM44, Percussion Josephson C42, Timp, SE Z3300A, and the harp had a Sanken CU31. In addition, to recapture some of the ensemble sound, I placed 4 mics across the front of the pit- all Schoeps Cardiods. 2 went on the front corners of the conductor's podium and 2 were flankers at about the 2nd row of strings. Ultimately about half the sound was from the "overhead" mics and half was the spots.

The mains and the string mics all went through external pres positioned at the stage. Violins and basses went through Grace 801, Violas through an API A2D (312), Cellos through Pacifica, and the mains went through a DAV BG2.

The Lexicon helped unify everything- 3 verbs were used. A long decay, a short decay and a mid-length for the vocals.

I think that covers most of it... Questions?

--Ben

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Forgot the pit pix.... . Brain mush. In the last one, see how many heaters you can find. The temperature got cold and damp just before the show. Union rules specify climate restrictions. Meant I heard heaters as well as music- it did get pretty cold, though, for an orchestra.

The first photo is the whole pit, the 2nd is the row of winds, the 3rd is the mains by the conductor podium (also notice the flanks off to the edges), and the last is the heaters. 30+ heaters were in the pit for the performance. We needed a power distro for just them...

--Ben

[shproductions03]

Great report.
So how did it all sound, very nice looking setup, why the external pres. onstage, and did thoughs channel go to FOH line level.

[David Spearritt]

Ben, I take my hat off to you, that is one complex and demanding show, well done and thanks for the report and photos.

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Originally Posted by shproductions03

Great report.
So how did it all sound, very nice looking setup, why the external pres. onstage, and did thoughs channel go to FOH line level.

Show went pretty well... The biggest complication was the weather. For those of you without much live sound experience, the sound of a system is influence a lot by the weather. When it is warm and dry, things sound one way, but when it is cold and damp, it behaves quite another. It isn't just the instruments that change (of course that changed a lot as well- you should hear what a cold damp string section sounds like) It wasn't damp with rain, just dew and a lot of moisture in the air.

I had to adjust the EQ for the system and even readjust the levels of some of the speaker to compensate for how they sounded and projected. The Apogees didn't project as well (had to raise the center level by about 6dB at show time) and the Dynacords lost some of their open sound and got more punchy sounding. Compensated for that with a bit of EQ. Most interestingly, I lost much of my gain before feedback as well.

Everything was handled, but in the end, there was a lot of scrambling when the show started to deal with it.

As for the pres-

I used pres on the strings and mains for a couple reasons. First, the strings are kind of the support for the rest of the orchestral sound. They need to sound good. Also, the quality of the mics on the strings was more of an issue than the quality elsewhere. I love the DPA 4061s, but they need a bit more help due to positioning. Also, Since the Violins were being summed on the O1V96, there is a bit of a sonic hit there compared to the PM5D. The mains got pres because they were really the most important mics in the pit. Also, the main snake run was 250 feet. Running at line level helps eliminate many of the gremlins that can get into a system when running mic level for a long distance.

There are some really slick new digital snake systems out there and that is the next improvement for sound... That is one of the cool things about the PM1D- you place the preamps on stage in a box. There is also a new interface that is similar that has just come out for the PM5D but we didn't have it on this gig...

--Ben

[Don S]

Hey Ben,

Looks really cool - sorry I missed it! Thanks for all the pics!

[phil.]

Hey Ben, great gig and an equally impressive report! Very cool! thumbsup

Would love to hear more about the actual flow of events during sound check. How does one start to get everything sounding smooth while keeping the console organized and with a good overview?

Cheers,

Phil.

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Originally Posted by phil.

Would love to hear more about the actual flow of events during sound check. How does one start to get everything sounding smooth while keeping the console organized and with a good overview?

Cheers,

Phil.

Great Question... I was fortunate and had a lot of sound checks. Still wasn't enough and there were pieces that had hardly been touched at the concert, but I had a lot of time to hear the music. There was a lot of music too (show was 3 hours long!!!)

The saviour of this gig was the digital board. I love the PM5D. Sounds great and the scene memories were awesome to have. This particular console didn't have the remote headamps, but for this gig it wasn't a problem (singers and musicians stayed on their mic for the whole show). I ran the board at 96K and clocked it (and everything else) to the Brainstorm DCD8 master clock. Sends from the various consoles/outboard were analog to keep things simple.

Basic routing was done before I set foot in the venue using the Yamaha Studio Manager Software. I sent the file to Hollywood Sound and they loaded up the board before it shipped out.

On the afternoon of the 2nd day, we had a rehearsal with just vocalists and keyboard. This allowed me to get some rough settings on the various vocalists as far as EQ, compression, etc.. were concerned. Yes, I used compression on a number of the vocalists. When you have a mic 3 inches from their mouth, you need help controlling the sound.

That evening, we had a first rehearsal with everything. For the first half hour or so, I kept the system off. During that time, I listened on headphones to get a basic mix together. After that was done, I was able to start parsing sections of the mix out to the system. I ran about 16 mixes of submix that I could then bring into the matrix for sending out to speakers. By the end of that night, I had the mix pretty much done for the show.

The following night was our dress. By that point, I had my mix together so I could then save scene memories for each piece. Before the rehearsal, I set everything up turning on only what was needed. As the rehearsal went on, I could tweak each scene memory and then resave...

Come showtime, it was a matter of recalling scenes and dealing with the stuff that was thrown my way with the weather....

--Ben

[pkautzsch]

Great report!

Did I get you right in that you used "1 mic per violin"? Any issues in Y-cabling two mics to one input?

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Originally Posted by pkautzsch

Great report!

Did I get you right in that you used "1 mic per violin"? Any issues in Y-cabling two mics to one input?

Yup... One mic per string instrument. This is not my normal way of working, but with the speaker placement issues, it was pretty much the only way to be able to get "dig" out of my string section. The ONLY mic I will do this with is the DPA 4061.

Y-ing mics is a good thing for summing mics together. It will work fine with most mics. You may loose a touch of your headroom, but for most of the gigs I do, that isn't a problem. Your biggest possible issue: bad phantom- if your board/preamp has a poor quality phantom supply, you may have issues. Some of the really power hugnry mics I would not suggest this- ie Neumann, Schoeps, etc... Most Shures, AKGs, etc... work fine 2 per channel. Heck, DPA makes a box that will power and mult up to 10 of their 4061 mics on a single channel's phantom.

For dynamic mics, I've put up to 4 of them on a non-resistive mult without issue. I usually do this on the PA jobs for a french horn section with Sennheiser 409s, 441s, 421s, or Shure SM7s.

--Ben

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I'll also add that while there wasn't as much gain available from the area micing, the bit that I did add in made all the difference in the world for my final orchestral sound. Meant that I could keep spot levels lower and still have a good blend and orchestral sound.

--Ben

[phil.]

Hi Ben,

thanks for the explanations. Vey cool!

"Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings." ~Robert Benchley

No doubt, you will need some compression on those vocals than!

Best,

Phil!