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Over the course of the last few years the Sydney Opera House (SOH)
has steadily been upgrading its venerable mixing and recording
infrastructure. Previously the venue entirely relied on analogue
systems. With mixing consoles in each performance venue touching
on the 14-year-old mark, it was definitely time to move into the
digital era.
The flagships of the new audio fleet are undeniably
the new Euphonix System 5 and Max Air consoles. The digital consoles
combined with miles (literally) of optical cable allows for performances
in any of the facility’s six venues to be recorded, captured
and controlled via the building’s main studio control room.
In fact the entire Euphonix system can be operated as a single
unified system.
The main studio is the latest showpiece of the
Opera House. It’s an impressive room, certainly one of the
city’s premier studio facilities. Again, Euphonix takes the
spotlight. A System 5 console has been installed, featuring 56
physical faders and 156-channel operation. Monitoring comes courtesy
of the SOH’s usual choice of ATC. Custom built by ATC and
catering to 7.1 surround formats, the SCM50A-based system (including
ATC sub) delivers transparent reproduction of the most minute dynamics
and textures.
I spent some time with the SOH’s Tony David
Cray discussing the benefits of the new infrastructure. Then to
see the whole shebang being utilised to somewhere near its full
potential, I attended a live-to-air Michael Bublé concert
in the SOH’s Utzon Room. It was an impressive broadcast debut
for the new setup. Gone are the OB trucks, days of retrofits and
complex analogue routing and multicores.
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A front of house mix for
the patrons, a recording mix and a broadcast mix was all achieved
in-house and without raising a sweat.
Deep in the bowels of the
Studio machine room, I kicked things off by asking Tony about the
Euphonix consoles.
Tony David Cray: What you see here is the play and record racks
of the Euphonix System 5 rig. This is where the design of Euphonix
is brilliant – it’s totally modular. Every one of these
devices is separate. They’re all constructed out of similar
objects, and every console we have in the building uses the same
object. So if I lose something – if I happen to lose a DSP
card, for example – I can just pull it out and quickly push
another one in. Every device has dual power supplies… Every
device has dual power supplies… it’s very resilient.
Brad Watts: I notice the studio’s outboard rack is looking
a little light-on at the moment. Is that down to the System 5 picking
up the slack?
TDC: Partly that, and partly because rack gear gets shifted about
quite regularly. Like most engineers my fallback position is to patch
in vintage outboard, just because you think it’s going to be
better. Then I had a session come in and I just didn’t have
time to touch the patch bays. Which concerned me a little. I sat
back and I listened to the Euphonix mix and thought, “that
sounds fantastic!”.
BW: That’s a bold admission isn’t it? Not resorting to
any of the high-end classics.
TDC: Perhaps, but I feel that’s more about the state of the
art rather than technique. We’re finding with our FOH systems,
in terms of doing PA work, we’re practically never using EQ
and we’re practically never using compression. |
In the old days, you relied
on the processing to get a sound happening. Nowadays the microphones
are great, the speaker systems are great, and the integration is
great. Essentially it comes down to choosing the right microphone
for that performer and the space they’re in.
The same is happening
in the recording world. I plug a mic into these Euphonix preamps
and it just sounds fantastic. If you want tone or colour, then by
all means go out to the Avalons (in the rack) but the majority of
the time I stay in Euphonix-land. The EQ and dynamics are just astounding.
When we first demo-ed the System 5 it was set up with a Norah Jones
multi-track. I just reached over and started playing with the EQ
on her voice and immediately I thought, ‘This is some of the
best digital EQ I’ve ever heard!’.
Then there’s
the dynamics on every channel. The compression is very neat and comprehensive – each
channel has around 40 dynamic parameters… plus the visual feedback
is just exceptional. The big advantage is really the immediacy of
the Euphonix equipment. For example, on a recent live performance,
just before the show began, the foldback developed a hum. It was
a low-level hum but you’d notice it during the quiet moments.
I was immediately able to set up a simple filter to deal with it
and then it was just a matter of copying it and pasting across all
the channels. Problem solved.
Storage & Recording
Options
BW: I notice you have a Genex recorder. Is that your principal storage
option?
TDC: I use the Genex 9048 for a complete and secure backup. The 9048
is fantastic: a single lead into the console and I’ve got total
backup. It will do live disk mirroring and it’ll record to
two drives simultaneously. It’s the super failsafe if anything
happens to go down. I use ProTools as my main tracking device but
we also have Nuendo, Logic and a Pyramix system – which, incidentally,
is emerging as a quite a powerful platform for orchestral editing.
In fact, our (soon to be finished) multimedia suite will have a Pyramix
system. It will essentially be a Final Cut Pro editing suite and
DVD production suite.
BW: In practice, how do the different storage and recording systems
get used?
TDC: The first real test of the system was about three months ago
where I had Amici [the English operatic group] in the concert hall
doing a gig. There were about 20 lines from there, which was about
a dozen mics on stage. Alongside we had Der Rosenkavalier [the opera]
being performed in the Opera Theatre.
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