WHEN LESS IS MORE
Concert hall sound travels outdoors
for Opera in the Park
- by Gregory A. DeTogne
As patrons of the arts, Jonathan and Susan Lipp are unique among supporters of Opera in the Park. Husband and wife as well as business partners guiding the operations of Middleton, Wisconsin-based Full Compass Systems, the Lipps have volunteered for two years running to help bring sound reinforcement to the Madison Opera's stellar summer event.
This year, just as they did in 2003, the Lipps and Full Compass partnered with Barrington, Illinois-based Bag End Loudspeakers to make the free concert in Wisconsin's capital city a success. Drawing a crowd of 10,000 under the stars in GarnerPark on Saturday, July 17th, Opera in the Park featured Metropolitan Opera soprano Elizabeth Futral, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Rivera, tenor Scott Piper, baritone Malcolm MacKenzie, and basso Kyle Ketelsen, all of whom performed with the Madison Symphony Orchestra and Madison Opera Chorus under the direction of conductor Steven White.
"As I see it, the real challenge of bringing sound reinforcement to an outdoor concert like this is giving it the aural aesthetics of a performance heard within the acoustically refined environment of an indoor concert hall," Jonathan Lipp says. "That doesn't sound easy, and it's not. Getting the orchestra's instruments and all the voices to blend naturally takes some mindful thought and consideration, and unlike pop music or rock, the input scheme does not respond to an excessive number of microphones."
Since Jonathan and Susan Lipp founded Full Compass 25 years ago, the company has become one of the nation's premier suppliers of audio, video, and lighting components, as well as one of the largest microphone dealers in the world. While Jonathan Lipp admits that his business role in life may well be to sell as many microphones as possible, he took an approach with Opera in the Park using as few as he could get away with.
While developing the input schematic for Opera in the Park, Lipp drew upon prior research he conducted related to improving the outdoor sound of another orchestra. As part of his studies, he had examined the micing techniques utilized for the Vienna Philharmonic's annual outdoor concert series. Similar in size and scope to Opera in the Park's orchestra and choral section, the Vienna Philharmonic's outdoor company uses as few as four microphones to properly capture its sound.
"After discovering how the world-famous Vienna Philharmonic managed its sound outdoors, I felt validated in my own thinking that less is actually more for these types of concerts," Lipp relates. "My primary objection to using a lot of microphones in these situations is that it's virtually impossible to obtain proper balance. For example, let's say an orchestra has 20 violins. If you used 20 mics--or even 10--it would be impossible to re-create the blend you'd get by using only one over the whole section. Some of the violins would be too loud, and some would be too soft. No one has the time, patience, or even the luxury to sort such things out."
Lipp is quick to cite other dilemmas encountered with using high numbers of mics onstage in these applications as well. These problems include reducing gain before feedback, and building a scenario with increased vulnerability to wind noise given the sheer number of open sources in use at any given moment.
He also believes that close-micing isn't always desirable either, given that many of the instruments are meant to be listened to at a distance, and wind up sounding harsh and raspy if heard miced up-close.
"Still another problem experienced with a high number of microphones in outdoor symphonic applications like this revolves around the matter of monitoring," Lipp points out, adding yet another issue to his list of potential pitfalls. "Within an indoor concert hall, where you normally wouldn't have a need for sound reinforcement anyway, you gain the natural acoustics of the room to provide the good variety of feedback that lets musicians hear their own performance. Go outside, of course, and you take that all away, and are forced to replace it with monitors. Monitors bleed back into the microphones, and the more mics you have, the more trouble you will encounter. Suddenly, all the control you had hoped for using many mics disappears."
Taking all this to heart, Lipp came to this year's Opera in the Park with only 11 microphones to cover the 50-piece orchestra, 50-piece choral section, and four vocalists out front. For the entire orchestra, a pair of AKG C414s were mounted in a center/forward position over the violins and violas. Using the switchable pattern of the mics in figure eight mode, Lipp and the sound crew experimented with a number of placements until a natural sound was achieved.
Conversely, Lipp called upon a pair of Neumann KM120s to manage his choral needs. Given the choir's close proximity to the orchestra, the Neumanns were switched to figure eight as well to keep instrument bleed at bay.
Three spot mics made it into the stage plot: an Electro-Voice RE20 for hard-to-capture percussion elements like triangle, a Shure KSM44 on harp, and an Audio Technica AT4050 mounted between two bass violins.
Out front, four more of Shure's large-diaphragm KSM44 condenser mics were used for the vocalists. Placed low in their shock mounts and tilted back in front of each of the performers, the mics provided a natural sound without obstructing sight lines, and let each of the singers move around freely without experiencing changes in volume.
"It was all very minimalist," Lipp says matter-of-factly. "There was a small amount of mixing to do, particularly when it came to balancing the choir, which was arranged with all the men on one side and all the women on the other. Beyond that, most of the mixing was done via placement of the microphones."
Presiding over a compact Tascam DM24 console, Bag End's Henry Heine was given full charge of creating the stereo house mix. "This is my second year providing the PA for this event, and each time my overall goal has been to have it sound like there is no sound system at all," he says, defining his approach. "When you have quality loudspeakers, microphones, and everything else in between, the less EQ the better, I say. There's a time and a place for equalization, but this isn't one of them. The most dramatic thing I did was maybe boost the treble a bit on one of the spot mics."
House arrays chosen for the event by Heine utilized a trio of Bag End's Crystal loudspeaker systems per side powered with Crown K2 amplification. Full-range, long-throw devices each outfitted with a pair of 12-inch drivers and a 1.4-inch exit compression driver equipped with a three-inch titanium diaphragm, the Crystal enclosures received LF support from a pair of Bag End Quartz subwoofers. Packing four 18-inch woofers apiece utilizing proprietary INFRA technology, the Quartz subs occupy minimal space while supplying high-fidelity, extended low frequency response.
Numbering four in total, frontfills enlisted for the task were culled from Bag End's TA6000 Series. A pair of choir monitors from the same product group were suspended from an upstage truss, and given a small amount of reverb to help replicate the sound of an indoor concert hall. Downstage floor monitors for the vocalists were Bag End Sapphire cabinets; house delay left-and-right relied upon another pair of Crystal enclosures on each side.
Processing across the board (including delay, EQ for the monitors, and matrix mixing for the fill speakers) was supplied by a DSP-based P4800 unit from Shure. To make life easier, Heine utilized the famously user-friendly unit to build and store "starting point" settings for the arrays back in his workshop using a B&K 4007 to capture test signals fed into a TEF20HI. Once on-site, final system tweaks were made based upon Smaart Live analysis. Crossover and low frequency processing were handled by a Bag End INFRA-MX2 dual integrator
Smaart Live also played a crucial role in setting system delay, which, in this case, was timed to always give the direct sound of the orchestra precedence over the frontfills and house arrays. "The stage can get fairly loud on its own, especially during crescendos," Heine points out. "So again, to keep things as natural sounding as possible, we gave precedence to the orchestra itself."
Performing without even the slightest hint of feedback, the system received kudos from both concertgoers and the Madison Opera alike based upon its intelligibility and smooth, even coverage. Heralded in the Wisconsin State Journal as one of Madison's shining moments in quality musical entertainment, Opera in the Park promises to be back next year on an even grander scale.
Founded in 1961 by the late stage director and singer Arlene Johnson, Madison Opera is a respected entity on the national opera scene. In addition to Opera in the Park, the company produces one other major work per year, as well as a series of children's operas.
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