When dBS Solutions, was tasked by Sell a Door Theatre Company to design a sound system that would take the touring version of the hugely successful, long-running West End show Avenue Q the length and breadth of the UK, the company’s Director Chris Bogg was faced with a stiff challenge. The size of venues the production would be visiting varied enormously; and on tours of this type, where truck space is at a premium, touring the minimum amount of kit, while keeping the production scalable, was crucial.
Chris designed a system based around the New Martin Audio XD12 speaker with front fills and delays being delivered by the DD6 compact cabinets recently added to stock. All of the processing for the system was undertaken by XTAs DP226 processors wirelessly controlled from a tablet PC system. Monitoring for the 6 band members was undertaken by the p16 personal monitor system allowing for each band member to have full control over their monitor mix. All radio mics where Sennheiser systems with DPA 4061 mics hidden in each actors hair line. This allowed for crisp defined details from the cast vocally whilst staying desecrate to those audience members in the front rows.
The audio console was a Midas Pro 1 system with remote stage boxes for the band. The whole show has been programmed scene by scene allowing the faders and channels needed to be brought to the operator via population groups. Scenes and sound effects as well as the shows video animations are played back and controlled from the custom built dBS Solutions Qlab systems.
The show has been touring around the country to great houses and reviews alike Its still not to late to catch this show in Portsmouth and Birmingham running until September 20th before heading to Hong Kong in September.