Eton College (The Farrer Theatre)

Here the brief was to provide a high quality sound system within the schools own Farrer Theatre that could deliver a quality of sound representative of the status the school has in the UK and world as one of the finest educational establishments in the world.  The drama and performing arts facilities as you would expect are vey impressive, however the existing sound system was old and tired and in need of replacing.

The theatre had an old JBL system that was not providing the clarity required for high quality speech and so the college looked at various leading professional brands to replace it with.  The theatre had a main front of house system around the proscenium arch comprising of a left, centre and right cluster along with left and right delay speakers half way back and also small infill speakers along the front of the stage.  Having successfully demonstrated various systems they opted for the Martin Audio Wavefront 3, theatre System as the main front of house speakers and the Martin Audio Blackline speakers for the centre and rear fills.  The Wavefront 3 Theatre system is a 3 way fully active box comprising of a 15” bass driver, 6 inch mid range and 1  inch compression driver.  To get the absolute maximum EQ control and volume out of the enclosures they chose to run it three way with an amplifier for every driver and used the Martin Audio DX2 to fully time align and EQ the System.  The end result is a sound quality comparable with any leading west end theatre and both the performers and audience commented on how clear and sharp the sound is.