TiMax2 SoundHub at Eton College

It's not every school play that necessitates the use of an Out Board TiMax2 SoundHub audio show control delay-matrix, but then Eton, the famous UK school, is not every school. To give full justice to Kafka's Joseph K -- produced within Eton College's Farrer Theatre -- a sophisticated immersive soundscape was called for. Apparently, Eton had never before done a show in which there were so many sound effects, which were also integral to the substance and meaning of the show.

To assist the students in finding way through the sound track, Eton's theatre tutor and production manager for the play, Matt Evered, contacted sound designer Rick Sarson, who specified TiMax. "There were several reasons for wanting to use TiMax," says Sarson. "It is by far and away the coolest sound toy ever and is the only product that utilizes the Haas effect to broaden the soundfield to cover the majority of the audience with moving sound effects. It is one of the very few ways of triggering multi channel moving sounds and, once set up, it is amazingly simple to use."

The simplicity was a must as, though Sarson was creating the sound design, pressure of work meant he could only attend the rig and the show, not the rehearsals. This added a second layer to Sarson's design plans as it meant packaging the design so one of the teenage students could operate it without supervision. "Fortunately, TiMax SoundHub allows it to be that simple, so I assembled all the sound effects beforehand and did re-edits on the day of the first show."

TiMax enabled Sarson to trigger sophisticated, multi-layered effects at the click of a mouse. This was necessitated from the very start of the show, where an immersive 25-minute soundscape based on the director's request for the 'sound of surveillance' accompanied the audience in and to their seats. Sarson reflects, "I am happy to say that they were all delighted with the results."

Simon Dormandy, play director and head of theatre studies at Eton College, confirmed, "TiMax enabled us to create with our students a sound world infinitely more rich and complex than we'd ever attempted before, and set it up in a way that the students could easily operate. It transformed the production."