A recent production of the Broadway musical “Little Women” at the Granada Theatre in Santa Barbara, CA was supported by a sound reinforcement system headed by AeroWave loudspeakers from Ocean Way Audio.
Jonah Verdon, touring audio engineer for the production, states, “I walked into the theater and looked at the PA, and I had never seen anything like that before. “I started tuning the system and it was crazy how much high end came through. It’s key in these classic Broadway shows to have vocal sibilance for intelligibility, and a lot of house PAs tend to lose that — requiring heavy processing to get it back. That wasn’t the case with AeroWave.”
Verdon, who had previously faced challenges with phase coherency and system tuning in other venues, also notes AeroWave required minimal adjustments to achieve the desired result. “A lot of times we’re dealing with weird phase pockets in the mid-to-rear orchestra,” he says. “This system was so quick to configure, and everyone in the audience was able to get a little bit from every speaker. It only took about one song to tune, whereas usually it takes about an hour.”
The musical’s sound design, which includes effects designed to traverse the sonic landscape, was delivered by AeroWave loudspeakers in an left-center-right (LCR) configuration. “The wide center channel on AeroWave allowed me to include more of the band in the center without overpowering the vocals,” Verdon concludes. “The overall sound of the show was more full as a result.”
