The big musical shows currently in the West End, on Broadway and on tour around the world, use sound equipment of a degree of sophistication, and cost that would have been unthinkable twenty years ago. Custom-built consoles, multiple channel radio microphones, and racks of digital processing equipment are the rule, rather than the exception. Three or four staff to a show is not uncommon, and the budgets for a big musical sound system would keep a fringe theatre company going for several seasons. It`s easy to get carried away with all this technology and money, and to lose sight of a part of the theatre sound that has been around for a long time. Straight plays don`t often need 50 channel consoles; it`s comparatively rare to perform the works of Shakespeare with the aid of 25 radio microphones, and digital effects devices are seldom of much use to the plays Oscar Wilde. It`s worth going back in time for a few hundred years to see just what has been available to the theatre sound man since before the days o Andrew Lloyd Webber.
(See document for exact affiliation information.)
Click to purchase paper as a non-member or login as an AES member. If your company or school subscribes to the E-Library then switch to the institutional version. If you are not an AES member Join the AES. If you need to check your member status, login to the Member Portal.
