Part of Strode College at Street, near Glastonbury, the 343-seat Strode Theatre is a key community and educational resource that promotes a mixed programme of live professional and amateur stage productions, mainstream and art house films, and live and recorded transmissions of opera, ballet and theatre. Opened in 1963 and funded by the Clark Foundation, it has recently installed a new Yamaha and Nexo audio system.
‘The theatre’s audio system needed completely updating, so we made a big plan to upgrade it all,’ says theatre technician and projectionist, Dominic Sandford. ‘Supported by the Friends of Strode Theatre, the first phase was to replace the loudspeaker system. We had worked with Nexo PS15s before and really liked them so, after talking to Yamaha’s Karl Christmas, he suggested looking at a full Nexo solution.’
Choosing a system comprising a pair of Nexo Geo-S1230s and two RS15 subs, with a pair of PS10s powered by an NXamp 4x4 for balcony fill, the new loudspeakers made a significant difference to the house sound. Attention turned to replacing the analogue mixing console: ‘We had a Yamaha CL5 lent to us and took to it straight away,’ Sandford explains. ‘It made the transition from analogue to digital very straightforward and I got to grips with it easily. I had used a Yamaha 02R previously and knew how reliable the consoles are, so we invested in our own CL5 and a Rio3224-D I/O unit.’
As part of Strode College, the theatre plays an important educational role, with students learning both technical and performing skills. The CL5’s ease-of-use means that students can be taught to use the desk and mix college productions. ‘It’s been a great tool for teaching them how live mixing works, giving them hands-on experience and keeping them in touch with the latest ‘real world’ theatre technology,’ Sandford says.
‘As well as that, it’s really important to make the audience experience as good as possible in a community theatre like this and the audience here has really benefited from the improvement in sound quality,’ he continues. ‘Sound can be a pretty thankless task - people will complain about bad sound very quickly, but they rarely compliment you on good sound. But once the new system went in, from the outset people were asking why it sounded so good…’
