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Blue Note Redux: In-Depth Look At New Sound For An Iconic NYC Jazz Showcase

Sound designer Amit Peleg takes us behind the scenes on the development of the venue's new sound reinforcement system

Beyond the stellar names that have graced its stage, one of the other enduring legacies at New York City’s Blue Note is its sound.

Forged within a long, narrow, and asymmetrical space, the voice of this venerable jazz club in Greenwich Village between 6th and McDougal Streets extends from a centrally-located stage out onto a crowd seated at multiple levels, most within 20 feet of the performers.

Imbued with good acoustics, the room nonetheless presents its fair share of audio design challenges, given dimensions measuring about 15 feet from the front of the stage to the rear wall, ceiling heights as low as nine feet, and distances to the outer walls at the left and right of the stage measuring 30 and 46 feet respectively.

The Blue Note was opened in 1981 by Danny Bensusan, with son Steven now serving as president. For much of the club’s life, Amit Peleg has been the guardian of its sound reinforcement.

Hired as the sound person upon his arrival in NYC in 1988, when Peleg first walked into the room he stopped, looked up, and stood face-to-face with three loudspeakers suspended over the stage.

Comprising full-range boxes on the bottom and separate horn-loaded HF sections on top, these three boxes were all there was for sound reinforcement in the entire house, with one aimed forward and two to the sides.

“The club was about seven years old then,” Peleg recalls. “They had been booking all of the heavy-hitters – the biggest names in the business – for some time. These were musicians that would normally never play a club. But with the Blue Note, because of its reputation, it was different. This stage may be little, but it’s world class. Ray Charles not only performed here, he brought along a 27-piece band.”

Amit Peleg at the club’s new Yamaha M7CL-48ES house console in the sound booth. (click to enlarge)

Meritorious Service
With the Blue Note already ensconced as a jazz epicenter, Peleg was given the go-ahead to draft plans for a sonic renovation.

A proponent of loudspeakers with ribbon-based high-frequency sections, he felt the technology was especially appropriate for this situation, where given the proximity of the stage to the rear wall, horn-loaded loudspeakers may tend to overexcite the room.

“I have a hard time mixing on loudspeakers loaded with compression drivers,” Peleg adds. “To me, the distortion and ear fatigue are disturbing. One of the drawbacks of ribbon-based designs at the time, however, was that they weren’t normally capable of producing the output you could get from a compression driver.”

The previous system’s Stage Accompany loudspeaker set. (click to enlarge)

Researching the limited options, Peleg ultimately uncovered a Dutch company, Stage Accompany (SA), that was producing a line of ribbon tweeter-equipped enclosures that could deliver the sound pressure levels required of the task at hand.

Impressed with the low distortion, flat frequency response, and lack of high frequency build-up within the boxes, Peleg inked a deal with SA that brought the enclosures to the club, largely flown above the stage.

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