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| Discreet broadcast quality recording system, King's College Chapel, Cambridge | ||
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The Brief: To provide a full high quality broadcast recording system that includes a
flying microphone rig that is as visibly undetectable as possible.
The Chapel of King's College, Cambridge is one of the most famous and finest chapels in the world. It also has one of the best ecclesiastical acoustics in the world. The fabulous stone work dates back to the reign of Henry VI. Now a World Heritage Site, our challenge was to design a system to suspend an array of carefully positioned microphones from the fan vault ceiling, and to be able to record this to the best quality in a small studio ...all without drilling one single hole in the stonework... |
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Currently through the design and prototyping stage, this on-going project has presented some unique challenges. The flying rig has required the development of some unique and very special microphone cables: They are very fine, to the point of being virtually undetectable a few metres away, they are light-weight and yet good to support up to 30Kgs, and they are of an electrical quality suitable for the fine microphones they are to work with. The system has also required the development of a sophisticated hoist mechanism that works up to eight custom-made precision winches in conjunction with each other to raise and lower segments of the microphone rig so as to position the microphones in precisely the location required for the performance recording. All this is designed to work with a simple-to-use control within the chapel and a recording system that is easy to operate and configure for each type of event. Weblink for more information about King's College, Cambridge: www.kings.cam.ac.uk/chapel |
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