SoundArt took out an Electro-Voice X-Line Very Compact line array at Winnipeg’s Rainbow Stage Theatre for the first run of Strike!, a locally produced musical based on Winnipeg’s 1919 General Strike.
According to SoundArt’s Dave Cousins, “A couple of years ago, the theater spent half-a-million dollars on a sound system that the producers of Strike! simply weren’t satisfied with for their show. They felt that the house system lacked intelligibility, and they contracted SoundArt to provide a solution. We thought that Electro-Voice’s new XLD281 dual 8-inch line array boxes would be ideal, and as soon as they heard and saw the rig, so did the show’s producers. The precise coverage and intelligibility these little boxes offer is remarkable. Every patron of the arts that we talked to this summer commented on how great the show sounded. In addition to the main central array of eight XLD boxes, we used E-V X-Line Xsubs, P3000RL remote-control amps and Xi1082 low-profile monitors. Though we were up against a concrete floor, plastic chairs and a domed plastic roof, we had full sonic control over the room with this compact system.
“The theater usually puts on traditional musicals to which everyone knows the words,” he continues. “With Strike! being a new show, it was important that the audience could hear the words clearly, as they were hearing them for the first time. High-quality sound is essential for a show to get off the ground: The audience needs to hear sung and spoken words clearly to relate to the play’s themes and content. With the XLD arrays, this was a given. We’re anticipating a heavy workload for our XLD rig, and it’s currently on tour with the Ten Tenors in theaters around North America. The critical performance-to-size ratio simply can’t be beaten with this rig, and it’s paying for itself every day as a result.”
For more information on SoundArt, visit www.soundart.com. For more information on Electro-Voice, visit www.electrovoice.com.
