OMAHA, NE — Rande Ferguson, FOH engineer for Mannheim Steamroller in the colder months, supported the Nebraska Shakespeare Festival’s 25th season earlier last year. The outdoor summer performances of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hamlet, each of which drew some 2,000 people to the University of Nebraska’s Omaha campus, were heard clearly via Grund Audio Design’s Gala Series GA-4041NGS loudspeaker system and DP-26C processing.
More details from Grund Audio Design (www.grundorf.com):
Grund Audio Delivers for the Nebraska Shakespeare Festival
OMAHA, NE — For the past 25 years, theatre buffs in the greater Omaha area have had the opportunity to enjoy some of the nation’s most inspiring Shakespeare performances at the annual Nebraska Shakespeare Festival. The most recent season’s offerings alternated between two productions of the renowned playwright’s best known works. The contrasting shows were A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hamlet, with each performance attracting about 2,000 people. This was theatre as it was meant to be—and to deliver the spoken word as originally envisioned, the cast and crew relied on the solid performance attributes of the Gala Series GA-4041NGS loudspeaker system and DP-26C processing from Council Bluffs, IA-based Grund Audio Design.
Rande Ferguson, a well-known audio professional, has engineered sound for the annual festival since its inception and is also FOH engineer for Mannheim Steamroller, best known for its contemporary interpretations of Yuletide favorites.
For the 2011 season the sound system consisted of six Grund Audio Design GA-4041s—positioned three enclosures per side—for the “house” mains, elevated a dozen feet in scaffolding that also supports lights. The GA-4041s are line array loudspeakers specifically optimized for stacking applications. Housing the same components as two Grund GA-2021N line array elements in a single enclosure, each GA-4041 incorporates four 10-inch low frequency transducers with four 1-inch high frequency drivers up the center. The GA-4041’s are also fully weatherized making them a great choice for outdoor applications.
For loudspeaker processing, Ferguson utilized three Grund Audio Design DP-26C digital processors—one for each loudspeaker stack and a third for FOH control. “The DP-26C is a terrific unit,” Ferguson says. “I programmed the two units that stayed with the loudspeaker clusters and the third processor stayed with me at the FOH mix position so that I could make EQ adjustments.”
“For this application, it’s all about the spoken word,” Ferguson commented on the Grund GA-4041 stacks. “Speech intelligibility is crucial. These loudspeakers have the best performance of their kind I’ve ever encountered—to a distance of 300 feet. Further, the 4041s also provide very even dispersion. While I wasn’t running stereo, I had a very wide and deep audience area to cover and these loudspeakers did an exceptional job of providing clear, highly intelligible coverage throughout the area.”
