Budapest, Hungary (February 15, 2019)—Madách Theatre is a busy venue—the 800-seat facility holds 350 performances a year for roughly 500,000 visitors. Currently presenting Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The School of Rock, the theater is making the most of its recent audio upgrade, which included a number of Allen & Heath dLive mixing systems.
Supplied by Allen & Heath’s Hungarian distributors, Audmax, the installation features three dLive Surfaces, three MixRacks, eight Expanders and several ME Personal Monitoring systems, which allow for the independent mixing of vocals, orchestra and IEM / stage monitors.
“The requirements of this installation were quite complex,” said Krisztian Varga, system designer and Managing Director at Audmax. “Madách needed a system that allowed for four independent mixing systems, which could also work together. This meant we needed something with a very high level of flexibility, a large number of channels and a common “language” for inter-connections.”
FOH comprises two dLive S7000 desks—one controlling sound for the orchestra and the other handling vocals and additional musical performers. Each surface is connected to a DX32 Expander located at FOH and a Waves Soundgrid system for additional processing. The S7000 surface used for the orchestra is connected to a DM32 MixRack located in the orchestra pit, which in turn is connected to a ME-U system powering 12 ME-1 personal mixers used by the musicians. Additionally, the DM32 is paired with a DX32 for additional I/O and a DX Hub card, which is fed to a central DX and ME patch system.
In the wireless/amp room, a DM64, connected to the second FOH Surface, is utilized for wireless microphones used by the onstage performers. A connected DX32 expander is positioned in the orchestra pit for additional I/O. A second DM32, also located in the wireless/amp room, is connected to a dLive S5000 which performs monitor mixing duties at the side of the stage, handling mixes for IEMs, the orchestra, choir and additional band members.
All three MixRacks are equipped with two GigaAce cards and one DX Link card; gigaAce is used for splits between all FOH and monitor systems, while the DX Link cards are fed to a centralized patch panel, which is then fed to additional panels placed on stage and in the orchestra pit, allowing for further I/O and personal monitoring when required.
Two DX32 and two DX168 expanders, accessible through the patch panel, are placed on stage along with a second ME-U system and used for more I/O or extra musicians on stage. An additional dLive set-up was also purchased for purpose of touring, including an S5000 surface, DM32 MixRack, a ME-U and ME-1 and two DX168 and DX32 Expanders.
Allen & Heath • www.allen-heath.com
