Co-Curator, Sound Kitchen

Peter is a freelance Sound Designer for Theatre. He is a Senior Lecturer in Sound Design and Production at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Chair of the Association for Sound Design and Production, Co-Chair and Co-Curator for Sound Kitchen at Prague Quadrennial 2027 and a founding member of Stage Sight. Peter has collaborated with NYX Electronic Drone Choir as a spatial audio consultant and works as creative collaborator with the Movement Director and Choreographer Imogen Knight. He also creates electronic music under the moniker of thesoundcollective and produces and presents the podcast Conversations with Sound Designers, now in its third series, available on Apple Music and Spotify.

Theatre includes: A Streetcar Named Desire at the Almeida and West End, ITA Amsterdam and BAM NYC; Moon for the Misbegotten, Look Back in Anger, King Lear, The Tragedy of Macbeth, The Tragedy of King Richard II and Oil at the Almeida Theatre; Salt of the Earth for Sophie Hunter Studio; The House of Bernarda Alba, The Deep Blue Sea and On the Shore of the Wide World at the National Theatre; Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train, Yellowman, It’s All Kicking Off Everywhere, Trade, Barbarians and Fireface at the Young Vic; This Is Not Who I Am, Gundog and Nuclear War at the Royal Court; Miss Julie and Black Comedy at Chichester Festival Theatre; The Fruit Trilogy at the Southbank Centre and West Yorkshire Playhouse; Romeo and Juliet at Sheffield Theatres; The Funfair at HOME Manchester; A Streetcar Named Desire, Hamlet, Scuttlers, The Last Days of Troy, Blindsided, That Day We Sang, Cannibals, Orpheus Descending, Saturday Night/Sunday Morning and Black Roses at the Royal Exchange, Manchester; and Masque of Anarchy at Manchester International Festival.

Co-Curator, Sound Kitchen

Robin Whittaker is an engineer and inventor with a lifelong passion for professional performance audio. After an early career with a small manufacturer and custom design house whose clients included Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Yes and Genesis, he moved to London to work as a freelance electronic design consultant and recording studio service engineer, before founding Out Board in 1987.

The company’s first commercial products were a patented motorised fader and the SS1 live sound moving fader automation system, first used on the original West End production of Miss Saigon and later on productions including Into the Woods and City of Angels. Its successor, the SS2, became the engine for the widely used 8 by 8 and Octopus automated analogue matrix systems for theatre sound effects, and powered moving fader retrofit automation for consoles including the Soundcraft Europa and Midas XL3. Out Board also designed the automation engine for the award-winning Midas XL4 console and developed the QP4, a quadraphonic pan control for spatial audio.

In 1997 Out Board launched TiMax, a DSP-based audio control system that has since received several industry awards for innovation. TiMax has become synonymous with sound localisation in theatres and auditoria, and was one of the first commercially available products to offer dynamic control of time delay and level for recreating realism in sound reinforcement. It has been used widely across theatre, musicals, opera, son-et-lumière and corporate events.

In 2009 Out Board launched TiMax II, adding system equalisation, integrated sound effects playback and control from positional tracking of performers on stage. The TiMax SoundHub has since been deployed in permanent theatre installations, arena-scale opera, national events and military tattoos, as well as museums, theme parks and visitor attractions, giving designers a complete show in a box: show control, audio playback and localisation in a compact 2U unit. Robin has also worked with designers of sound art installations and installers of sound systems for large-scale dance events.

In 2023 Out Board was acquired by the Focusrite Group, and Robin continues to pursue his passion for developing markets, concepts and products.