The summer season by Switzerland’s ThunerSeespiele theatre company saw a month of performances of the musical Les Miserables take place on the company’s unique outdoor stage, with a DiGiCo
D1 console making its debut on FOH and monitors.
ThunerSeespiele (Lake Thun Plays), performs in a beautiful exterior setting, its stage built on Lake Thun near the town of the same name. The backdrop of the lake and mountains make its productions visually breathtaking.
Equally as important to the company is the outdoor audio component which requires sound reinforcement. Specializing in high quality audio consultation, design, engineering, and installation, Basel-based contractor Audiopool was chosen to supply the sound infrastructure to the production.
Audiopool has a long association with the DiGiCo platform, as it was one of the first companies in Switzerland to use a Soundtracs DS3 console in baselcitystudios, back in 2001. Additionally, Les Miserables saw another debut for the company: it was the first time it had specified a DiGiCo console for a live production.
FOH engineers on the production were brothers Markus and Peter Luginbuehl, who had a PA comprising left-center-right clusters of d&b cabinets, with d&b subs on the left/right clusters, Kling & Freitag subs on the center cluster, and a pair of K&F delays.
“Technically, Les Miserables is very complicated,” says Audiopool’s Thomas Strebel. “We needed a console with the ability to handle a range of different functions and we found that with the D1.
“Because of the number of actor and orchestra microphones, we were using every possible input: 56 from the stage rack, plus a further eight from the local rack, and every output.”
As well as handling FOH duties, the D1 was also providing six-way monitor mixes for the entire orchestra via a network of onstage Kling & Freitag loudspeakers. No outboard processing was used, just the D1’s internal compressors and reverbs.
“The outstanding sonic performance of the DiGiCo D1 really helped to produce the desired result—clear, controlled audio which sounded extremely natural,” says Thomas. “That’s what counted and we are very pleased with it.”