When the iconic Bleecker Street music venue, the Village Gate, was at its peak in the 1960s and ‘70s, the sound system was decidedly monaural, though plenty suitable for the eclectic array of musicians, from folky Dave Van Ronk to fusion prophets Dreams, who trod its stage. But when the Village Gate came out of retirement this year, under the rubric Le Poisson Rouge, its programs may have been just a eclectic as ever, from jazz to classical to rock, but its sound system had to face the reality of modern expectations. It had to go surround.
Modern Expectations
The system, with Meyer Milo components configured in a 5.4 array (four subs), was assembled and installed by Masque Sound, which has done multichannel sound systems for Broadway theaters as well with a design by John Storyk, who is better known for his recording studio designs. That’s all part of a differentiation strategy in a city that has once again become cluttered with club venues. Le Poisson Rouge’s owners, David Handler and Justin Kantor, both classically trained musicians and composers, paid a premium for the system — not quite $1 million for a system that covers 800-seats, says Handler — but they can command a premium for its use. One of the maiden voyages of the system was the debut, last July, of a new piece by electronic music and media composer Morton Subotnick, which in classical electronica is the equivalent of the famous four nights at the dearly departed Bottom Line by Bruce Springsteen in 1974.
“A sound system like this gives artists like Morton and other classical composers a place where their compositions that require multiple source points can be accurately portrayed,” says Handler. It also makes for a memorable experience for record release events, particularly multichannel or high-resolution records like Nine Inch Nails’ With Teeth, but certainly for any record. “The amount of depth that this system has is pretty incredible,” says Handler. “It takes the room a step beyond being a place just to hear music — it makes it a place that attracts music and sound connoisseurs.”
There are a few touches that wouldn’t be out of place in a recording studio, including airtight doors leading to all exits and hallways. “This club shows people what a listening environment can be,” he says. “It’s like high-def video — once you’ve seen it, you don’t want to go back.”
Surround on Broadway
Clubs aren’t the only live spaces that are getting into surround audio. Broadway’s first surround production was Into The Woods, 2002’s spooky Tony Award winner that had the prerecorded voice of Dame Judy Dench, playing Giant Tess, appear first as sound from the rear of the theater, then inch ever closer to the front, speaker to speaker, as the lighting dragged a huge shadow across the stage. The effect did as it was intended: it turned heads, though that’s not something you want to do on a regular basis on Broadway lest you incur the wrath of the diva. But Into The Woods’ foray into surround did get the attention of directors, more and more of whom have prevailed upon show producers to spend the extra geld for a multi-channel sound system.
But the trend has limits. FOH mixer Dave Rat (Red Hot Chili Peppers) assembled a multi-channel system for Pink Floyd founder Roger Waters when he headlined the Coachella festival this year, using L-ACOUSTICS’ V-DOSC, dV-DOSC, KUDO and other components. What made it work, says Rat, is the fact that the surround channels — which occupied six of the eight clusters around the field and were aimed to fire back at the stage and over the audience’s heads — were used almost exclusively for prerecorded sound effects, such as jet and rocket engine sounds, that were mixed through a separate Yamaha PM5D console rather than the Midas XL4 used for FOH. “As soon as you put anything rhythmic into rear channels at this kind of scale, you’re asking for time smear and delay problems,” says Rat. “The only solution for that is to keep the clusters spaced at a maximum of 70 feet between them to avoid delay problems. But that would also limit the size of the venue or add a huge number of extra clusters or towers.”
As impractical as a surround live PA seems to be for large venues, Rat believes it’s a great way to brand a club or theater as a serious listening room and attract artists and patrons who want that level of audio.
Increasingly Cinematic
As theatrical productions become increasingly cinematic, surround sound seems to work for them the way it works in the movies. “In an effects-heavy show, surround systems are now considered necessary on Broadway by some directors,” says Simon Matthews, who was the production sound mixer on Into The Woods and who now runs what has to be called a many-channel sound system for Young Frankenstein, in which a separately sourced speaker hangs spaced about every eight feet around the room and twice as many in the orchestra rings.
Going surround on Broadway, where sound systems are for the most part leased on a weekly basis, doesn’t cost producers a lot more money. David Strang, general manager at PRG Audio, one of Broadway’s main systems suppliers, estimates that it adds no more than $1,200 to $1,500 a week to a typical system rental. “But the surround part of the sound system is usually the first to get cut when there are budget issues in a show,” he says. Strang says the live surround trend has resulted in having to buy and keep more different types and sizes of speakers available, since the range of club and theater requirements is much wider than that usually found in touring systems. “It means a bigger investment in more kinds of equipment and not necessarily a bigger return on it, and that’s meaningful in this economy,” he says.
This has not escaped the notice of sound systems designers, who can use the principles of supply and demand to leverage better rental deals for their productions in a post-strike environment where producers remain skittish despite healthy box office returns. “When you know what the shops have on the shelf, it helps to negotiate the price,” says Dan Moses Schrier, who designed the first surround system on Broadway.
Surround sound in clubs and theaters might also do for live music what 5.1 did for the movies: get more people out of the house and buying tickets to shows. And that’s good for everyone.
Dan Daley can be reached at ddaley@fohonline.com
