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 Buble 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.
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!”.
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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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