Sydney Opera House

Walsh Bay Theatre

Capitol Theatre

Sydney Conservatorium
of Music

Sydney Opera House

Stage Manager's Desks and Performance Paging System

In 1996 the Sydney Opera House, through the NSW Department of Public Works, called tenders for the supply of a new custom Stage Managers Desk and Performance Paging System, to replace the system installed 21 years before.

There are five main auditoriums in the House; the Opera Theatre, Concert Hall, Playhouse, The Studio and Drama Theatre.

There is also a reception hall, five rehearsal studios, four restaurants, six theatre bars, extensive foyer and lounge areas, 60 dressing rooms and suites and of course the Green Room.

The system is based on stage manager's desks and associated node racks, multiple paging stations, a Digital Message Store and Forward System, Speaker Control units, and remote controlled microphone preamplifiers, all designed and custom built by Creative Audio for the project.

Amongst the most significant items designed
and built for this project are:

• SMD1 Stage Manager's Desk
• MP405 Remote Control Preamp
• MMM3 MediaMatrix Monitor Panel
• PCU1 Paging Station
• SVC1 Speaker Volume Controller
• SCP1 Wall Panel Controller
• M601 Six Channel Wall Mount Mixer
• C141 Remote Control Comms Master
• CLC1 Cue Light Controller
• DMS121 Message Store and Forward Unit

The peripheral devices present in the system are the auditorium microphones, program sends from the venue mixing consoles, local mixers, ambient noise level sensing (ANLS) microphones, and monitoring microphones for foyer and dock areas. At the heart of the system is a Peavey MediaMatrix (MM) DSP sound processing engine, responsible for all audio switching and processing. Audio is conveyed from the paging sources to the MediaMatrix via a digital audio CobraNet network consisting of a high-speed fibre optic cable backbone, with 100BASE-T distribution nodes.