The first ongoing improvisational theatre troupe in the US, Chicago’s Second City is an improvisational comedy venture that has been running since the 1950s. As such, has brought the likes of John Belushi, Mike Myers, Bill Murray and Stephen Colbert to the bigger stage and screen.
Part of an upgrade to the facility’s sound reinforcement systems, the venue has recently installed three Aspen SPN1612 16-input/12-output audio processors from Lectrosonics. TC Furlong was contracted to handle upgrade, and is also involved in the company’s consulting and system design efforts, discussed the nature of the project and his decisions for implementing three Aspen processors.
‘The Second City produces shows with various scenes and songs addressing local, national, and international issues through social and political satire,’ Sales Manager Brian O’Connell reports. ‘Similar in content, the Mainstage provides for a larger, more historical experience while the ETC is a more intimate room. UP Comedy Club is the newest room at The Second City and is dedicated to producing and presenting a diverse array of programmes that include stand-up, sketch, improvisation, podcasts, and other eclectic performances. The house needed a capable sound system that could run unattended much of the time while also providing the reliability and consistency necessary for a venue of this nature. Working with our tech Scott Helmke, we determined that the Lectrosonics Aspen SPN1612 would be the right choice for each of the three rooms.
‘With eight Earthworks C30/C choir mics over each stage and lots of improvisation during a typical show, we needed very good automixing capabilities, since putting wireless microphone packs on the talent was not an option,’ he continues. ‘In addition to clear, natural sounding audio quality, system reliability was another very important consideration because whatever equipment we deployed, it would be used constantly and for many years to come. My past experience has shown me that Lectrosonics equipment sounds good and is designed to last.’
O’Connell singles out automixing and audio processing as of particular importance: ‘The unit has excellent automixing and loudspeaker management provisions in addition to a very flexible matrix mixer,’ he says. ‘The fact that we could get great automixing, all of the speaker management options we required, and flexible matrix mixing in a solid product made the units a no-brainer choice.’
With the third phase of The Second City’s upgrade complete, O’Connell reports that the Lectrosonics equipment has performed well and that the client is pleased. According to Kyle Anderson, Technical Director for Second City, ‘the processor allows us to get more out of the microphones and takes some things off the engineer’s plate to be free to mix music and manage various feeds for broadcast and streaming.’
