Aviom’s Pro16 personal mixing system is helping musicians stay on point for Paris’ newest show “Zorro the Musical” currently being staged at the city’s famous Folies Bergere Theater.
“Zorro” marries the tale of the legendary Spanish masked hero with the music of the Gypsy Kings.
The show’s orchestration places instruments in three separate locations in the theater: guitars are situated on one platform, keyboards and miscellaneous percussion on another, and a full drum kit on a third.
To make this layout work, Stage Entertainment, producer of “Zorro The Musical,” needed a way to configure the monitor mixes to keep all the musicians on cue and in time while also minimizing cost and setup time.
Having used Aviom products for its production of “The Lion King,” the company knew Aviom’s personal mixers offered the simplicity and flexibility they were looking for.
“We had only one day for sound check with the musicians, so we needed to spend less time on gear settings and more time on sound,” says Bertrand Billon Audio Manager with Stage Entertainment.
“With the Aviom system, all we had to do was run Cat-5 around the theater, cut it on site, and put the plugs at both ends. It couldn’t have been faster or easier. Plus, using Cat-5 helps keep production costs down.”
For “Zorro,” the setup consists of a Y1 A-Net card installed in a Yamaha M7CL console at front of house. Monitor mix elements such as direct outputs, sub-mixes, and stems from the console are routed by the mix engineer to the 16 channels of the Y1 card.
From there, the digital signal is output to an A-16D Pro A-Net Distributor, which sends the mix stems via Cat-5 cable to eight A-16II Personal Mixers located on the three platforms. Each personal mixer provides a 16-channel mix feed for the show’s eight musicians that they can customize as needed. The guitar and keyboard-percussion sections use wired in-ear systems, while the drum section uses noise canceling headphones.
Another benefit of the Aviom personal mixers is that they let users save and recall their personal mix settings. “Since “Zorro” has three groups of musicians, being able to recall the settings is very useful. It lets all the musicians be at their best, without requiring a lot of adjustment,” says Billon.
The personal mixers are also used to help train substitute musicians who can experience the show as if they were a member of the band while studying the score from the front of house mix position. “Being able to add more personal mixers virtually anywhere in the theater is a very useful feature when the subs need to learn their parts and see how it accompanies the show’s staging,” he adds.
The simplified monitor mix system takes minimal time to set up and provides high quality, easily repeatable results for the musicians in the band throughout each performance.