Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), part of the Edith Cowan University (ECU) in Perth, has just completed a huge investment programme in its performance spaces.
When choosing audio equipment, the faculty wanted students to experience the best that the industry has to offer, so chose DiGiCo consoles and L-Acoustic loudspeakers alongside Fourier’s transform.engine and KLANG.vokal systems.
Equipment was supplied by Group Technologies, distributor for DiGiCo in Australia and New Zealand.
With a reputation for excellence and one of the most comprehensive offerings for performing arts training in Australia, the WAAPA facility includes vast mixture of performance spaces across the campus.
Flexibility and power were priority features for its technical infrastructure updates. As Sound co-ordinator and lecturer Mike Vernau explains, the DiGiCo Quantum range was a perfect fit for the power behind this brand-new system.
“We’ve chosen to go with DiGiCo consoles for various reasons, including flexibility of routing and layout, and the sonic clarity of the DiGiCo ecosystem,” he says.
“The building is both a university and a production venue that has multiple contemporary music and theatrical spaces. In the Sound House, our contemporary jazz venue, we’ve got two DiGiCo Quantum 326 consoles, whilst our musical theatre venue, the Playhouse, has a Quantum 338 and Quantum 225. We’ve also got an SD12 in our Flex Theatre, which is predominantly used for training.”
The system was designed to give students the best possible starts to their careers. This enables them to leave university with a solid understanding of the latest technology and industry leading equipment, while upholding the venue’s reputation for excellent musical theatre production values.
For Russell Proud, Senior Consultant at Charcoalblue, responsible for venue and technical design, this was a key factor in the system design.
With over 300 public shows a year on the schedule, flexibility and versatility was also high on his list of priorities for the venue.
The consoles included T software, to maximise flexibility and deliver specialist functions like performer/alias tracking to manage complex sound design and cast changes.
“We used Quantum with Dante outputs and DQ-Racks to best match the infrastructure within the building,” he recalls. “The system has to connect to the broadcast facility and actually be able to do both film and audio recording of live shows. We also ensured that the consoles were loaded with DiGiCo’s T Software to really get the most out of the theatre productions that WAAPA produce.”
With DiGiCo Quantum at the heart of the system, console integration enables students and engineers to keep everything they need at their finger-tips, so regardless of the type of performance, they can keep up.
The KLANG system brings 3D immersive in-ear-monitoring to performances with KLANG.vokal and KLANG.kontrollers.
Fourier transform.engines allow students to experiment with a range of VST3 audio plugins, giving them the flexibility to bring studio-grade effects into the live environment.
Sam Jones Works specifically with Sound on the Performance and Design course and has been enjoying the upgrades.
“We’ve recently taken delivery of two KLANG:vokal units and 24 KLANG:kontrollers, which we’ll be integrating in our DiGiCo consoles,” he expands. “We use those primarily for orchestra mixes, self-driven immersive mixes for musical theatre, and we’d also like to integrate them into IEM mixes, driven from the DiGiCo Quantum consoles.”
Having a choice of performance and rehearsal spaces makes the DiGiCo ecosystem even more important.
The ease of integration with the L-Acoustics, KLANG and Fourier systems makes transferring from one venue to the next seamless.
The additional convenience of transferring show files means that immersive mixing, virtual sound checks and multi-track recordings can all be easily transferred from one space to another, a huge bonus for teaching.
“DiGiCo acts as a nexus, integrating with products like KLANG, Fourier and L-Acoustics effortlessly,” Vernau concludes. “Because WAAPA is known as a leading trainer in Sound for Theatre, it made perfect sense to go with L-Acoustics and DiGiCo for our sound reinforcement needs. I’ve been teaching digital audio and live sound mixing for 12 years, and having a facility like this was a dream come true. There’s nowhere in the world quite like WAAPA ECU CBD campus, and we’re really excited to see how our first group of students through the door use the facilities this year.”
