The Underglobe, as the name suggests, is situated in the depths of the Shakespeare Globe Theatre in London and has recently installed a high quality sound system comprising Meyer Sound speakers and Allen & Heath digital mixing products, including the new iLive-T Series.

The Globe was rebuilt and completed in 1997 through the work of renowned actor and director, Sam Wanamaker. The Underglobe is host to the Globe Exhibition, and venue for the Globe’s corporate and educational events.

With a vast amount of experience in corporate concert and theatre sound systems, including many major shows in the West End and Broadway, Autograph Sales was appointed to help design and install the system with sound designer, Sarah Weltman. Having collaborated before on the refit of the Young Vic Theatre in Waterloo, the Globe’s technical manager, Paul Russell, asked Weltman to design a system of high quality, capable of fulfilling almost any event that the Underglobe may host.

The system was worked and refined by Autograph and Weltman to provide a solution that integrates with the room’s aesthetics and is capable of delivering exceptional quality in an extremely reverberant and large space.

“Flexibility, versatility and speech intelligibility were the key aims of the system, whilst keeping control and operation simple to enable a non-technical end user to walk up, switch on the system and play a CD, or perform and make announcements using radio mics,” states Weltman.

At the heart of the system is the new Allen & Heath iLive-T mixing system, installed to cater for greater input requirements and control of theatrical productions, musicians, bands and other events that frequently perform at the venue.

Several loudspeaker systems were modelled in the space, with Meyersound products - comprising several UPJ-1P’s, UP-Junior’s, USW-1P’s, and UPM-1P’s - chosen for their coverage, size, quality and the fact that they are self-powered. Meyersound’s MAPP highlighted coverage and levels throughout the system and helped to engineer speaker placement, delays and output levels.

The system is distributed throughout the room to give even coverage, controlled by a central Allen & Heath iDR DSP system. The iDR-8 16x16 matrix mixer and iDR-Out expander unit are utilised to provide 10 inputs into the system from wall panels around the venue, and 16 outputs to the loudspeaker system. PL-4 and PL-5 wall panel controllers are fitted to give users remote, simplified control of the venue’s loudspeakers and wireless systems, and operate the system as if it were a standalone audio system.

Simeon Ludwell, design engineer for Autograph Sales, comments:

“The iDR system allows very complex processes to be simplified and condensed into one button push, allowing end users to operate the system without needing to know what is going on in the background.”

iLive-T was chosen because of its design architecture, whereby there is a separate stage rack and control surface connected over CAT5 cable using Allen & Heath’s proprietary ACE™ (Audio and Control over Ethernet) link. A series of high quality CAT5 patching is installed into the infrastructure of the building allowing the iDR-32 MixRack and iLive-T80 Control Surface to be plugged in at many points in the venue, and offering exceptional flexibility, multiple placements and room orientation.

“The new ACE system offers control and audio bussing on one CAT5 cable, simplifying the connection process and offering quick and efficient set up,” continues Ludwell. “iLive’s vast processing capability, and the 32 inputs and 16 outputs on the iDR Rack mean large bands and theatrical productions can be realised.”

Milab, Sennheiser Radio, and Countryman lavalier microphones, and K&M stands were also provided to complement the high quality system offering exceptional performance for all events.

“We needed a system that would address the varied productions we manage,” comments Russell. “iLive and iDR give us exceptional flexibility, yet are of a high specification to allow us to cater for all events. The PL wallplates make it simple to use for non-technical staff and clients, and the distributed audio design of iLive-T makes set up easy and quick.”