• The Rocky Horror Show
• By Richard O'Brien

In my sophomore year at Colorado State University, I was asked to sound design the Rocky Horror Show. The concept driving my design for this show was to lean into the campy aspects of 80s/90s Sci-Fi movies and media. My team and I faced many challenges over the course of the process which I will get further into below. Program

• The Process

Upon researching the Yamaha LS9-32, the reperatory Front of House Console, I came to realize that it didn't have the fire power we were looking for. With a cast of 21 performers being individually body miked, a six piece band in another room, and 8 Qlab sound effect inputs, we ran out of I/O quickly. With that realization, my team and I began looking at other options. We had at our disposal a Midas PRO 1 with a Midas DL251 stagebox. With 72 total preamped inputs and 32 outputs available, my team and I thought that we would never have that issue again. The more informed among you might be thinking to yourself "doesn't the Midas PRO 1 only have 40 channels of control?" If you thought that I wish we could've talked before we got as far along into the process as we did before realizing that.

That said we were past the point of no return and had no better options, all that was left was to keep going. The first thing that needed to be figured out is where to put the overflow of inputs we now had. This is where comes the Yamaha 01V96 v2 comes in. In order to solve the overflow, we plugged all of the ensemble into the 01V96 and split it back out as two busses into the Midas PRO 1. That's inputs solved. Now comes the outputs.

Coming from a Yamaha lead system, we had an Aviom 16/oY-1 output card. Yet another thing this Midas is incapable of interfacing with. At this point we're pretty fed up with this console and its strange patching screens but we must press on. In order to incoporate our Aviom consoles into the system, we moved the Yamaha LS9-32 into the other room with the band in order to plug the mikes into it then split them as direct outs to the Midas stage box and the Aviom system. This essentially used the LS9-32 as a big expensive splitter.

All of these workarounds produced the system you see below:

figure 1

Not only was the FOH console in the room ill equipped for a musical, so were the loudspeakers themselves. As you can see in figure 2, the system is a 20 year old Renkus Heinz TRX system made for what seemed to be a wannabe proscenium setup. In order to remedy the one-sided feel in the side sections, keep in mind this is a thrust theatre, I added a pair of EAW JF260zs. In order to assist the feel of all of the voices coming from above, despite the fact that they were, I added some Meyer UPM-1Ps as front fills and image assistive units. Last but not least, everyone wants more bass in a rock musical, so I finally I added a pair of Mackie SRM1850 subwoofers.

figure 2

• Show Photos

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