Sound By Design were recently contracted to provide sound reinforcement for the annual awards show of Siemens PLC held at the National Motor Museum in Gaydon, Warwickshire for regular client Private Drama Events.

Based on a bond theme, the event had a set backdrop of the Ice Castle from the recent film "Die Another Day" including the green Jaguar XKR from the movie (complete with machine guns!) and presented by Miss Moneypenny, actress Samantha Bond.

The nature of the show allowed us to install a fully fledged 5.1 surround system, providing the audience with a cinema style audio experience. The system was based around a Meyer Sound UPJ-1P left/ right system, Meyer M1D centre speakers, Meyer UPA-1Ps at the rear with PSW-4s providing the low frequency element. A Meyer CQ-1 cabinet was also hidden within the set for spot effects. The system was kept in check via 3 BSS Omnidrive Compact Plus units and time aligned using MacFOH analysis software.

Pre-production for the show involved sampling sounds in the field such as traffic noise (built up from overlayed samples of various cars and vans found in the office car park - apologies to the neighbours!), airport departure lounges, mobile phones and a motorbike. These were recorded binaurally with a pair of headset mounted microphones providing a very realistic soundfield.

Editing was achieved with a G4 Powerbook running Digital Performer 4 software linked to a Metric Halo 2882 Firewire Interface. This enabled us to edit 5.1 surround tracks and pan audio around the soundfield via a USB Joystick (no computer games honest!). All of the show material was backed up to a Mackie SDR 24 track which was run in sync with Digital Performer for backup. A MIDI keyboard was used for triggering explosion sound effects in real time with the live pyrotechnics.