English National Ballet's in-the-round production of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" has been back out on the road again this summer, and Sound By Design, were contracted to provide the orchestral reinforcement. The show started out in the Royal Albert Hall, where we have provided sound services to the last two ENB productions. This time around promoter Raymond Gubbay decided to take the show on a UK arena tour, after the run at RAH.

The sound design for the Arenas had to encompass the same level of audio imaging and discreet microphone/loudspeaker placement while accommodating venues that in terms of distance were 3 times the size of the Royal Albert Hall.

System Designer/ FOH Engineer Phil Wright, chose to base the system around the same centre point source concept as the smaller RAH system, using longer throw Meyer Sound enclosures. The cluster consisted of a mixture of Meyer self-powered and conventional boxes, with their positioning and focus optimised for the different areas of seating.

A centre front array of five MSL-4s, provided the long throw to the back bleacher, while side fills of MSL-3s provided the shorter/wider throw necessary to accommodate the upper seats at the sides. 8 x MSL-2 wide boxes were used as downfill to cover both front and sides with delays and levels fine-tuned to suit the different areas. The ground-based system comprised 4 x Meyer 650-P sub-bass enclosures and 4 x Meyer UPA-1P full-range boxes as front-fill for imaging.

The loudspeaker system overall, was time-aligned and equalised using Meyer's SIM II system which was operated by Phil. System alignment was provided via BSS Varicurve and TCS-804 Delays. The mics and control side of this system was identical to the RAH system, with a 40 channel Midas XL3 at the Helm.