TiMax Tracker in Rep at Regents Park, London

	Sean Palmer and David Burt in Crazy for You. Photo: Tristam Kenton.

During its four-month summer season, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre becomes one of London's largest, selling out its 1200-plus capacity night after night. Mike Walker, the Olivier Award-winning sound designer, once again drafted in the talents of the TiMax2 SoundHub audio delay matrix, and, for the first time, TiMax Tracker automation to simplify the control task and help counter what Walker sees as the "two fundamental audio problems in open-air theatre."

This year's lineup included Lord of the Flies and The Beggar's Opera, with a children's version of Pericles running concurrently under it during the day time, and the musical Crazy for You. Walker explains the one common factor driving his sound design for this diverse mix of performances, "It's about pulling the audio image back to the performer, so that what an audience member sees and what they hear is credible -- the audio has to match the picture."

"To do what we're doing in this space, you really need a delay-matrix like TiMax. Last year we used the TiMax SoundHub for Into the Woods and manually triggered the required presets. This year, we decided that to make the system more flexible we would use the TiMax Tracker to alleviate the need for so many cues. We used the TiMax system for this one specific job of focus and realism -- I like to keep things simple because when we're not, we're getting in the way -- and if we get in the way, the audience no longer believe it."

The essential open air nature of the auditorium and lack of roof dictated that the speaker setup comprised just a few front fill loudspeakers, a row of delays, and some larger cabinets in the proscenium arch left and right positions. TiMax addresses this "not at all ideal" positioning by defining localization zones on the stage, left to right as well as upstage and downstage, which are then mapped via its delay-matrix onto the multi-channel Opus Audio loudspeaker system, supplied and crewed by Mike Walker's Loh-Humm production resource company. This creates accurately localized sound reinforcement, which ensures all audience members relate directly to each performer's stage location at any time. Walker stresses the necessity: "In matinees and the earlier part of the evening performances where lighting cannot help, only audio can give you a clue as to where people actually are. The open stage is a big expanse in which you have to pull focus in order to know who is speaking."

TiMax2 addressed the second issue in the auditorium, in Walker's words, "the slightly thrust stage. While it doesn't seem to stick out into the auditorium much, it sticks out enough to create a 90-degree quadrant from the center of the stage. This means that the proscenium loudspeakers are already half way upstage." The zoning of the TiMax delivers the multi-point source localisation that standard delay techniques for vocal localization cannot. He continues, "The two dimensionality of the proscenium arch often helps with that but in this case, without TiMax, nothing is helping it at all."

This year's use of TiMax Tracker allowed more accurate localization as well as greater flexibility in the production period as changes to the staging didn't impact on desk cues. "The multi-level set for Lord of the Flies had around 12 different image definition zones, and as directorial changes were made and scenes adjusted, we were able to keep refining the image definitions rather than just trying to keep on top of the where actors were on the set.

The TiMax set up for the theatre's summer season -- with initial on-site assistance provided by Out Board's Robin Whittaker -- was straightforward even with two shows in rep: The Beggars' Opera and the children's version of Pericles. "The fact that the shows were in rep caused us no problems, we simply created a setup that served both shows. The scenery for both had to coexist and so we treated the sound design similarly. The scene changes for Pericles and Beggar's Opera may have seemed considerable, but the fundamental format or footprint didn't change."

The success of Walker's approach is just to keep things clean and simple, he says. "It is very straightforward. It is all about quality. All I want to do is take the sound of the performer and recreate exactly what they're doing. I try to not get in the way of anything: it's all about making it sound like the person and making sure that everyone in the theatre can hear the appropriate sound at the right time."