Sight & Sound Theatres, one of the world’s most unique and successful Biblically-based theatre companies, owned by the Eshelman Family, has hosted more than 15 million guests since its founding in 1976.
It is dedicated to “Bringing the Bible to Life’ with an on-going series of immersive stage productions depicting Christian stories that often break through the “fourth wall’ and directly engage the audience. Sight & Sound Theatres recently ensured an even more engaging audio experience for its guests with an upgrade to a Harman Studer Vista X digital mixing console.
The theatres’ primary location is a 2 000-seat theatre in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, with a second theatre in Branson, Missouri. Gary Parke, audio operations supervisor for Sight & Sound Theatres had this to say: “We provide our audiences with a very immersive experience that goes beyond a typical theatrical production; in fact, both theatres have additional stages to the side of the main stage, so that a lot of our shows feature a 180-degree stage setup.’
The addition of the Studer Vista X digital console to the Lancaster County Theatre marks a massive improvement in audio quality. Furthermore, the console’s ease of use relative to its limitless capabilities made it an attractive option for Parke, who oversees all the programming for Sight & Sound Theatres. “Flexibility and input / output count were big factors in choosing the Vista X and the ability to build our I/O configuration to our exact preferences was a very attractive feature,’ notes Parke.
The Studer Vista X offers an supreme intuitive user interface and features Studer’s patented Vistonics and FaderGlow features, while providing control of 800 or more audio DSP channels and more than 5 000 inputs and outputs. At the heart of the system is the Infinity DSP core, which uses CPU-based processors to provide huge numbers of DSP channels for large-scale, high-resolution audio processing and mixing.
The theatre is currently using 64 wireless microphones and playing back the audio via Steinberg Nuendo audio software. All audio will be fed into the Vista X via Audinate’s Dante networking technology. “In addition to the I/O flexibility, the Vista X will make it so easy to be creative in developing a realistic audio atmosphere for the audience, so we can create ambient sound effects that really make guests feel like they’re part of the story, the Vista X gives us so much more flexibility than we have had before,’ confirms Parke.
