Inevitably, given the historic nature of the facility, great care had to be taken to preserve its unique architectural features. This certainly had implications for the installation of the new mixing system, as the Maly’s head of sound, Alexander Kazarin, explained: “We had to come up with a solution which could provide us with a great number of audio channels with a minimal amount of cabling. The only solution was to use a digital communication system.”
Having concluded that many current digital systems were unsuitable for the Maly, Kazarin selected Midas’ acclaimed XL8 system. “The XL8 has completely fulfilled our criteria,” he said. “All the channels can be relayed from the console to the stage via two Cat-6 cables. We also have a huge input and output count compared to what we had before.”
The theatre has two mix positions – one at the rear of the stage and a second control surface in a box to the side of the stage – and can change mix position as necessary by reconnecting the HyperMac cable from the stage routers to the required console. In addition, a recording studio one level up can be fed with 48 channels of audio via four Cat-5 cables.
“We’re delighted that we’ve sold the XL8 into this prestigious Russian theatre,” David Cooper, sales and marketing director of Midas and Klark Teknik told II. “The sound specialists in Russian theatres are some of the most respected professionals in the industry and we’re honoured that they’ve chosen our flagship product for this important renovation.”
