The Pacific Northwest Section toured the theatre March 24, 1997. The group was split into two to handle the crowd. The theatre is located at Seattle Center, the home of many other world class performing arts theatres. It is a second, smaller theatre, part of the Seattle Repertory Theatre complex, which also houses the Bagley Wright Theatre. All of the funds for the new theatre's construction and state-of-the-art audio systems were funded by private donations.

The heart of the system is manufactured by Level Control Systems (LCS). The LCS unit is a 16 input by 32 output audio router with adjustable cross points. The LCS router is controlled by a Macintosh Power Mac 7500 with two control screens and is linked via MIDI. The front-of-house mixing console is a beta version of a the Mackie SR40.8 sound reinforcement console.

Attendees had the opportunity to hear sound effects of a steam locomotive with passengers arriving at a train station with different sounds coming from speakers located through out the theatre. We could here the train arrive from one side of the theatre, passengers load and unload, and the train left to the other side. For these spatial effects a variety of EAW speakers are located front-of-house above the proscenium arch - left, center, and right; in the balcony face; under the balcony; in the catwalks, and on-stage.

Other amenities include an elaborate paging system implemented by using Crown IQ technology controlled by a Crown IQ drone. A two channel Sennheiser infrared assistive listening system provides audio to the hearing and visually impaired patrons that wear special headsets. On the video side, an infrared sensitive black and white camera with an infrared light source provides visibility on the video monitors backstage in a complete black out.

The sound mixing equipment racks contain hard disk recorders, and MiniDisc recorders making analog audio recording tape a thing of the past. And, yes they did specify an isolated grounding system to minimize possible hum and RFI problems.

Attendees gathered outside the theatre afterwards for refreshments on the Center grounds.

Thanks to Capital Communications for letting Jeff Sanderson and Mark Pearson come out to give us this technical tour and special effects demonstration in this great new facility.