Sound On Broadway: A Detailed Look At The Audio Designs For Several Top Current Shows

Billy Elliot the Musical
Based on the 2000 film, with music by Sir Elton John, Billy Elliot the Musical opened in 2005 in London, where it won awards for best musical, actor, choreography and sound design. This year Paul Arditti won the second ever Tony for Sound for his design, while also nominated for his design of the play Mary Stuart.

In total, Billy Elliot won 10 of its 15 Tony nominations as well as 10 Drama Desk awards, including Best Sound. Hot show? Though the audio vendor is Masque Sound, even Geoff Shearing can’t get tickets.

The Imperial Theater (cap. 1,435) is where I first met Bob Biasetti when he mixed Dirty Rotten Scoundrels – one of the first on a DiGiCo D5T – in the same house-left rear mix position. The orchestra level holds about 800 with one fairly large balcony above.

Biasetti mixes Billy Elliot on a DiGiCo D5T, with a TC control surface, with a Yamaha DM1000 sidecar used for sound effects. Outboard effects include two TC Electronic M3000 reverb for principal actors and chorus, plus five Lexicon PCM 91 for orchestra, drums, surround and some special playback effects.

A redundant pair of Mac Minis run Q-Lab with a pair of MOTU 828 Mk II interfaces for multi-track music, SFX 5.6 runs on dual Masque custom PCs for sound effects, and an Apogee Big Ben digital word clock keeps things synch’ed.

Mike Wojchik at Bob Biasetti’s DiGiCo D5T and TC control surface for Billy Elliot the Musical. (Click to enlarge)

The main loudspeaker system employs an 11-box center cluster of Meyer M’elodie for vocals, with an MSL-2 on either side for orchestra reinforcement to the rear balcony. A house truss also supports six UPA-2Ps for the rear balcony delays.

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Down on the orchestra level at each side of the stage two more M’elodie cabinets supply vocals on top of an MSL-2 for orchestra reinforcement, plus a Meyer UPM-1P to fill the outside area, supported by a d&b B2 subwoofer.

Above at each side of the stage, the balcony is covered from dual five-box M’elodie arrays, each with another Meyer MSL-2 and another UPM-1P. Filling the far outside seats in the balcony on each side are a UPA-1P and a UPM-1P, plus another d&b B2 subwoofer on a platform.

Across the front of the stage are 10 Meyer UPM-1Ps, while a pair of Meyer MM-4s fills around the conductor at its center. Under-balcony loudspeakers consist of ten Meyer UPM-1P at the balcony’s lip and two rings of eight d&b E-0 loudspeakers beyond them.

The surround system consists of three EAW JF80 compact loudspeakers on each side, six across the back and the same arrangement for the balcony upstairs, plus a row of six more across the front of the balcony for covering orchestra level seats in front of the balcony. CQ-1s are built into the set’s back wall for effects.

In the trap room below deck, a Yamaha M7CL is automated for the Aviom monitor system used by the pit musicians, getting inputs from a half-dozen XTA DS800 active splitters.

A Yamaha DM2000 uses a dozen Yamaha D8HR 8-channel mic pres for the 96 piezo-electric contact pickups sunk into the stage for tap shoes. Also shoehorned in downstairs are Yamaha DME 64 digital mix engines and the Meyer Galileos.

“The system is EQ’d and delayed with the DME64s, except the Melodies, which are EQ’d with the Gallileo,” Arditti commented. “I like to use the crosspoint delay matrix function in the DME to delay each loudspeaker in each vocal zone, which provides more coherent vocal imaging.”

On deck, John Cooper and Stephanie Vetter assist Mike Wojchik – when he’s not subbing for Biasetti – with wireless. There are 48 channels of Sennheiser 1046 wireless receivers and 5012 transmitters, used with DPA 4061 body mics. Sennheiser e300 G3 IEMs are used for wireless playback to Billy’s prop radio and cassette player.