Like the Broadway production, sound design for the tour was provided by Steve Kennedy, well known for his previous work on The Producers, The Lion King, Rent, Aida and Tommy. Upon the recommendation of fellow sound designers John Shivers and Andrew Keister, Kennedy chose to specify 10 L-Acoustics dV-DOSC loudspeakers to deliver intelligible coverage to the often 'acoustically-challenged' balcony seating areas of host venues out on the road. Sound Associates of Yonkers, New York provided the sale of the dV-DOSCs, as well as a pair of dV-SUBs for general low-end reinforcement.
Keister, who also serves as supervising production sound engineer for the tour, elaborates: "We very often have two actors with omnidirectional microphones on their foreheads singing face-to-face, so the phase cancellation issues can be horrendous. To remedy that, we've employed two separate sound systems, with two loudspeakers everywhere that you'd normally expect to find only one - except in the subwoofer system - then put each actor into either the 'A' or 'B' system.
"Using that approach, we have an A/B cluster of 10 dV-DOSCs - five per system - hanging from the proscenium truss and firing into the balcony. The minimum throw from the cluster to the first audience member at that level is 35ft, so the coverage is nice and wide at that distance. That's one of the beauties of the dV-DOSC - plus the audio is very even and consistent on up the balcony. Some of the venues we're visiting have as many as 5,000 seats, which normally would have required us to hang a delay cluster on a truss 30 or 40ft back in the house to get any clarity at the rear of the balcony. But that's not necessary with a dV-DOSC array - it's an impressive box.
"We're also very happy with the dV-SUB, which is a great sounding subwoofer in a small package. When we first set it up and ran program material through it to see what we thought, it didn't even take one minute to know it was the right choice."
(Lee Baldock)
