A Night at the Opera with CODA Audio N-RAY

CODA Audio’s compact line-array system, N-RAY, was recently selected to provide reliable sound reinforcement for the Chinese Peking Opera Arts Festival.

The 9th Chinese Peking Opera Arts Festival, organised by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Beijing Municipal People’s Government, took place over a three-week period in September and October 2021 at The National Centre for Performing Arts. As the leading opera art event in China, the Festival has been the launchpad for a large number of top-level productions and performances, and has been instrumental in the advancement of Chinese traditional culture.

The principal work featured at the Festival was The Grand Canal of Beijing, a complete orchestral suite for the Beijing Opera, combining a range of different vocal genres with orchestral music. The presentation was a multimedia stage event, combining music, choreography and costumes.

Held in the concert hall of the National Centre for Performing Arts, the symphonic performances not only demanded high quality audio, but also that the loudspeaker system was as discreet as possible in order to avoid compromising video feed sight-lines or other aspects of the presentation.

Production specialists and CODA Audio’s distributor in China, Tongbo, supplied a CODA System based around the German manufacturer’s latest N-RAY product.

The system comprises six N-RAY with one SCN-F subwoofer per side, as well as four HOPS5 for a stage lip system and a further eight HOPS8 for monitoring. The compact nature of the loudspeakers meant that they were largely invisible in the live video feed.

Following the performance, Wang Lei of the Technical Department of the National Centre for the Performing Arts, and the sound designer for the production, declared that the audio was “exceptional”.

David Webster, Global Marketing Director for CODA Audio, commented:

“It’s fantastic to see N-RAY being deployed for such a prestigious occasion. Tongbo’s excellent work in delivering the CODA Audio message to the Chinese market is having a strong impact judging by the number of high-profile events with which the systems are involved. N-RAY was clearly the ideal choice for this particular application, where as an ultra-compact yet very powerful solution, it was able to meet the production team’s precise need for discreet, high quality coverage.”