Sound Department

The Miller Centre has a well-equipped sound department, run from the Control Room at the rear of the theatre. All music and sound effects are stored on a dedicated computer running the SFX Pro programme. Where necessary, effects and music are compiled and edited on Adobe Audition – this provides a comprehensive and flexible means of building just the right individual sound required for special effects.

Playback is through 8 channels of sound from the pc to a 32-channel, 8-buss mixer (Soundcraft Sprit Digital 328 desk) into 8 or more loudspeakers, mainly Electrovoice S-200 and JBL stack.

Other equipment includes a Denon cassette deck, Technics compact disc player, Tascam minidisc players, Trantec and Shure radio microphone systems and a Marantz SP-50 dolby sourround sound processor. The Dolby equipment is required because films are regularly shown in the auditorium.

The sound system is particularly flexible in that we can direct sound individually to any one of eight speaker points. This flexibility enables us to quickly reconfigure the sound system for plays that are performed in the round and allows us to create complex sound plots, improving the depth and quality of sound that is delivered to the audience.

Most of the sound played is, of course, just music. However, we are often required to create quite complicated sound effects – for example playing music and sound effects simultaneously and appearing to move sound around the auditorium. Most of the sound effects we use are everyday sounds (eg thunder, bird song etc.) but we often have to create specialised effects for certain shows and it is here that our new computer system is invaluable.

If you would like to hear some of these custom made sound effects please go to Jetsound a website run by one of our engineers, Jim Tadd http://www.jetsound.st There are sound effects there that have been actually used in Miller Centre shows.