(Credit for all production images from The Great Gatsby at the Broadway Theatre: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)
As The Great Gatsby returns to the Broadway stage, its Jazz Age setting is brilliantly underscored by a sound system that spans L-Acoustics’ own history. Designed by Tony Award-winning Sound Designer Brian Ronan, the system at the Broadway Theatre combines the legendary dV-DOSC line source loudspeakers with the latest Kara II and X Series speakers, demonstrating L-Acoustics’ enduring quality and innovation. The system is designed to bring out the best of both vocal and band for this timeless musical based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald book.
“This production uniquely showcases the sustainable product design of L-Acoustics,” says David Strang, Vice President of Audio Sales at PRG, which supplied the sound system components, including a DiGiCo Quantum7T front-of-house console. “The dV-DOSC speakers, first introduced in 1999, are still delivering exceptional performance, a testament to the incredible ROI of our L-Acoustics investment.”
In fact, the “system” for The Great Gatsby is actually two discrete systems—dV-DOSC dedicated to the show’s vocals, and Kara II used to support the band—with some overlap. “The dV-DOSC have a way of putting vocals in a very pleasant place without needing much EQ, which I enjoy,” says Ronan who won the BroadwayWorld Awards Best Sound Design of a Musical category with Gatsby, a trophy that will share shelf space with his Drama Desk Awards in the same category for Anything Goes and Beautiful, and Tony Awards for Best Sound Design of the musicals Book of Mormon and Beautiful. “The vocal tonality is wonderful, and the speech intelligibility is fantastic. They’re a great speaker for vocals. For the band system, I find the Kara II to have a much wider frequency range, which covers all of the instruments nicely in every configuration. They really open up the instruments.”
“Brian is a brilliant sound designer and we wanted to find him exactly the tools he was looking for,” says Strang, who was able to assemble most of the 50-plus dV-DOSC enclosures that Ronan needed from within PRG’s North American inventories, showcasing the incredible return on investment of their original purchase. PRG’s asset managers were able to source the final few speakers from the company’s Dubai office, which serves the MEA market. They shipped those to New York and the system was ready to go.
But not everything in this production is old-school: “Brian is also using some of the latest L-Acoustics speakers for this project, including Kara II and X Series, so Gatsby’s system has the best from every era,” says Strang. “It’s not something you see every day, but for someone of Brian’s stature, with whom we’ve built a 25-year relationship, we go to these lengths to make it happen.”
The Great Gatsby’s sound relies on both the dV-DOSC and Kara II at the system’s core. The proscenium LCR rig comprises dV-DOSC, with ten elements over the proscenium center over the apron, powered by LA8 amplified controllers. A second center cluster is made up of Kiva II speakers to address the balcony. Front-fill and some near-field left coverage are supplied by 5XT coaxials, and an orchestra delay system consists of the company’s X8. Additional orchestra-fill is delivered using X12, powered by LA8, while an array of 5XT provide onstage foldback. Furthermore, a combination of dV-DOSC and Kara II are suspended from a rear truss, reinforcing the 19-piece band.
Ronan’s goal is to apply the two speaker types for their respective strengths, and then meld them into a single aural experience for the audience. “Because I do like to have a source from the center, as opposed to just left and right, my intent is to try to make it sound like it’s all coming from the orchestra pit, even though it’s not,” he explains. “So on Gatsby, there are three arrays in the center: the middle hang uses dV-DOSC for vocals and the left and right hangs are Kara II, which I then triangulate with the proscenium left and right again, so I can treat them with a different delay time and different EQ, always trying to make it sound like it’s coming from the band. There’s a little overlap on the proscenium side where it’s just dVs, and I want to get some band in there.”
Just as analog aficionados have found ways to combine tape decks and digital audio workstations for record production, Ronan says he’d like to keep combining the vintage with the modern when it’s appropriate, and L-Acoustics’ depth of technology makes it his primary resource for that. “The dV-DOSC is still the perfect theater box, in my opinion,” he says. “When I can find them and it makes sense, I’ll use them. Fortunately, L-Acoustics has plenty of great speakers that I can choose from to build exactly the perfect system for every show every time.”
For details on Broadway’s current run of The Great Gatsby, visit www.broadwaygatsby.com. PRG can be found online at www.prg.com/en/markets/theatre.
