Perhaps best known for shows such as Sunday Night at the London Palladium and the Royal Variety Performance, The Palladium theatre in London’s West End has also played host to long-term productions such as The King and I, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Sound of Music and The Wizard of Oz. For 2016, venue owner the Really Useful Theatres Group returned the theatre to variety, opening up the calendar to one-off events and touring productions.
Prior to 2016, the Palladium effectively had no house PA system. To attract the highest calibre of artist, the venue management opted to install a top-of-the-range, rider-friendly audio package.
‘The Palladium is a beautiful theatre; it’s 105 years old, therefore we needed a solution that not only sounded great but looked great too,’ says Spencer Phillips, Group Head of Venue Sales & Marketing at Really Useful Theatres Group. ‘It became clear that the system capable of providing the highest possible standards and likely to be accepted by the majority of visiting productions was manufactured by L-Acoustics.’
SSE Audio Group’s experience of the L-Acoustics brand, both for touring and installations, along with its work in other theatres in the capital made them an obvious choice of supplier, with Hire Manager Luther Edmonds assigned the project. The installation is initially for 12 months, so a contract rental touring system was specified rather than a permanent solution, giving the Palladium flexibility without having to commit to a large capital investment.
There are three tiers of seating at the 2,286-seat Palladium –stalls, Royal Circle and upper circle. In order to provide even coverage throughout, Luther Edmonds specified LR hangs of nine L-Acoustics Kara boxes for the Royal and Upper Circles and a further six Kara boxes per side hung off gallows arms for the stalls. L-Acoustics 8XTs have been hung under the circles and from the ceiling to provide coverage to the rear of each area. Additional infill close to the stage is provided by two ARCS cabinets per side and four 8XTs hidden behind grilles in the stage apron.
Four SB18 subs are flown centrally off the front truss and eight SB28s are set beneath the stage, on the stage apron, in two private boxes and on two observation balconies each side of the proscenium to provide the necessary sub coverage that the system required.
The system is powered by 14 LA8 amplifiers, with system routing, processing and control delivered through a custom-built SSE DriveRack including Lake Processors located at the mix position at front of house.
Included in the contract rental package is an Avid Venue Profile digital mixing console with an Avid Stage Box taking care of inputs on-stage. SSE has installed a number of multicore options from stage to FOH including Cat5, BNC, Fibre and analogue to accommodate the needs of visiting tours and their consoles.
The installation was overseen by SSE Hire System Tech Nick Lythgoe and took place during January 2016. Once the work was completed, Lythgoe was retained for the first shows to assist the on-site technical staff while they got up to speed with the system’s operation. ‘The first couple of visiting engineers started off by saying they wanted to make this or that adjustment to the system and that was before they had even turned it on,’ says Matt Rutter, Chief Electrician at the venue. ‘Nick Lythgoe suggested that we listen to it and make any adjustments from there. As soon as the engineers heard it they were really impressed, to such an extent that we left things exactly as they were. Nick and the SSE team have given us a system that is really well tuned to the room.’
‘There was no flexibility in completion date: it had to be operating for our first event booking of the year,’ says Spencer Phillips. ‘Thanks to the hard work, knowledge and ingenuity of all the team involved, the installation was completed in time. We chose L-Acoustics because we wanted the international music industry to know we mean business as we return the Palladium to an alternative programming model.’
