Listen to This

"I am done going to the Aronoff." That's what reader Joe Gorman wrote to me in April. "If you don't sit close to the stage, you will not hear a thing. We saw The Color Purple last Wednesday and the show suffered from lack of quality sound system. It looked good, but the story was lost. You observe people watching a show and see the palpable strain in their bodies, leaning forward to hear! The blue hairs were in big company that night, as we all lost a bunch of the show due to the crappy sound system."

I wrote back to Joe, who knows something about sound, since he’s a musician and has a daughter pursuing a professional career in theater. He also has a son who’s worn hearing aids for a long time. “He hates going to plays,” Joe wrote me, “because it is so hard to hear.”

He talked about several shows he’d seen that didn’t measure up, and a few more that did. Then he challenged me, “Do a column on sound and I bet you will get a huge response.”

So I did, in my Curtain Call column published April 30 titled "Can You Hear Me Now?" Here's a bit of what I wrote:

I’m a Baby Boomer on the threshold of a birthday, so when I fuss about having trouble hearing in a theater, I wonder if I’m suffering from too many years of loud Rock music or perhaps just too many years of, well, life. But what I have been hearing recently are complaints from others about theater sound.

When I reviewed Know Theatre’s recent production of Bare: The Musical at Know Theatre, I wrote, “This production of the Rent-styled, through-sung musical is most troubled by poor sound management, especially when Bare’s cast sings with choral ferocity that lacks diction. They do so with fervor and apparent understanding, but the words are tough to grasp.”

The cast was young and talented, but despite Know’s intimate 200-seat space, the sound was a mess — mics were not brought up at the right moment or cut out at the wrong moment, and lyrics were blurred by too much volume. It made the show tough to enjoy. ...

By the way, I’m pretty sure it’s not my aging ears: Last week I saw the Cincinnati Playhouse’s Ella and caught every word of Tina Fabrique’s excellent musical portrait of Ella Fitzgerald. I recently came across a feature in a technical theater magazine about how the Playhouse made certain the sound for last fall’s Altar Boyz was topnotch, after the same production was criticized in St. Louis. That’s the way a professional theater needs to operate — anticipating this issue and fixing it in advance.

I’m interested in readers’ comments about similar concerns. I promise I’ll hear you.

I obviously hit a nerve. My column generated lots of responses. Here are a few of them, and I invite you to submit more.

From Devon Campailla, Associate Producer, New Edgecliff Theatre: I could not agree with your 4/30 Curtain Call article more! The P&G Hall at the Aronoff Center could not suffer from worse sound quality. Not only was The Color Purple difficult to hear from my balcony seat, but I’ve seen numerous shows in that theater and never once been satisfied with what I’ve heard (the mix for Spamalot a few years back was the most hideous thing I’ve ever listened to ... and I was on the floor, dead center). Thanks for voicing what I’ve been thinking for a long time!

From Matt Frazer: I’ve played percussion for many of the “semi-pro” theaters around town: Showboat/Covedale, The Carnegie, New Stage, Ensemble Theatre and some NKU productions. I’ve also been the head sound guy at my church for the past three years (by default, I’m afraid; I couldn’t deal with the inconsistent, often horrible sound each week).

First, “doing” sound is a very difficult thing to do well. I’d equate it with playing an instrument. It takes years of training and practice to become even mediocre at it. And since most everything that reaches the audience’s ears goes through that one person, they are a very critical part of how the production sounds. Unfortunately, I’ve seen it become a last-minute afterthought at times or a position that will be one of the “budget compromises.”

Second, and in defense of my fellow sound people, quality sound systems cost an outrageous amount of money. A good church installation can start around $50,000 and can easily reach $100,000 for, say, a 400-seat church venue. One of those cool, tiny, wireless headset mic systems (a good one) is $1,000. That’s for one of them. So for the theaters that don’t have these systems (can you guess if they do?), the sound people are in a hole to begin with. It is hard to get low-quality sound gear to work well consistently.

I think it can be difficult for newer companies like Know and New Stage to get these items and people into their budget. A word of praise goes to Tim Perrino (and Denny Reed) at Showboat/Covedale, who almost always have excellent, glitch-free sound in their productions. And their gear isn’t even all that great.

As our society becomes accustomed to stunning sound and visual quality (“How come that doesn’t sound and look as good as my 5.1 Surround-Sound DVD flat-screen system at home?”), they are expecting it everywhere they go. It’s why churches like the Vineyards and Crossroads install high-dollar systems. They also put a priority on putting good people in tech positions and extensively training them. The bigger churches usually have a full-time technical director. Maybe theater directors should give more consideration to the scope of productions they are really able to put on. It’s been my experience that four good musicians will always sound better than four good musicians and four “just OK” ones. Even if it doesn’t sound as full.

As for the touring Broadway productions in the Aronoff’s big room, they really have no excuse. For what they charge, they should have stunning sound. It just goes to show how complicated, and underlooked, it can be.

(I responded to Matt that Ensemble Theatre’s production of The Great American Trailer Trash Musical sounded good, and he answered, observing, “ETC is using, I believe, John Curley as their sound guy. He’s an excellent musician [Afghan Whigs] and owner of Ultrasuede recording studios. See, just like actors, it’s all about the talent.”)

From Erwin Hein: We were in the audience for Bare: the Musical on April 19 (at Know Theatre) several weeks into their staging of that production. Tim Hein, one of the two leads, is my nephew. I am in my late 50s and I found the sound at Know Theatre to be awful. I noticed that when the action was on the floor the sound was OK. When the action occurred up on the stage, the lyrics and dialogue couldn’t be heard. I suspect it had something to do with the location of the band, right behind the onstage action. Is it possible the actors’ mics were also picking up the band, too?

I was disappointed, especially because this problem made it difficult to hear Piper Davis playing Sister Chantelle. What I did hear of her was great, sassy, sarcastic and an integral part of the play. In any case, the production company should have solved that problem early on.

I also agree about the Aronoff. Sometimes the dialogue becomes difficult to hear for the Broadway Series. That is a ridiculous state of affairs. Does the audience in New York at a Broadway theater suffer the same plight?

It’s been a while since I heard anything at Music Hall or the Taft Theatre, but I don’t recall having sound problems in their big rooms. I’ll continue to attend theater in Cincinnati, but I will try like crazy to listen to the production on CD or DVD before attending so I don’t miss so much.

From Sandy Grinkmeyer: I thought I would sound in on this subject about which you wrote in this week’s CityBeat. I read your critique on Know Theatre’s Bare a few weeks ago about the sound and, even though I do not miss many of Know’s plays, I was reluctant to see this one because of the sound problem. However, I figured since you gave them a "thumbs up" perhaps it would be resolved by the time we attended last Friday night. Unfortunately, it still was a problem.

All six of us had difficulties hearing some of the words. The nun was very difficult to hear and understand, especially when the band was full blast. The band was far too loud during some of the songs, and the nun’s mic was not doing its job.

We all agreed vehemently with your assessment that if, in fact, tickets are purchased for a fun evening out, the words need to be heard and understood. We have had that problem with the Know Theatre many times and some of the time with New Stage Collective — namely Caroline, or Change, which was also a musical and clever. It’s such a shame to attend these plays and not hear how clever they are. I watched a TV show on public television after seeing Caroline at New Stage and saw several scenes from Caroline and could actually understand the words to several of those songs — finally, I realized what was going on in that play. It’s a major problem, and thank you many times over for addressing it. Keep it up. The worst theater for sound by the way is Gallagher Hall at XU. It's impossible and I have vowed never to go back to that hall.

If you have opinions about the sound quality at area theaters, please leave a comment here.

— Rick Pender

Comments

[John Fox]

Even the Playhouse worries about its sound quality. Here's Ed Stern being interviewed in CityBeat's State of the Arts issue in August 2005:

"'Winning the Tony Award isn't enough,' Stern says. 'I have to worry about 10 to 15 years from now. I don't want to rest on our laurels, so the quality has to improve all the time.'

"And so do the physical components of the creative mission. Stern says the Playhouse can't afford to disappoint a ticket buyer who, for instance, has a hard time hearing actors in the Marx Theatre because the sound system isn't state of the art."

[Andrew]

I think that Matt Frazer has hit the nail on the head: sound equipment is expensive and mixing
sound is a very tricky art.

When equipment is brought into a small theatre from a variety of different sources to outfit a big show, it doesn't necessarily all play nicely together, and the poor sound engineer is often scrambling to compensate for malfunctions on top of both the peculiar acoustics of small theatres' converted spaces and the normal challenges of creating a good mix.

And beyond all the voices, there's the issue the band itself. Because the cost of paying musicians over the course of a run is pretty high, small theatres may only get a handful of rehearsals with the full instrumental ensemble to even attempt to get the mix right before opening... and if session musicians change from night to night, it can throw more wrenches into the process.

None of this is meant to excuse problems, but simply to help illustrate for readers of the blog the way things work in small theatres.

I sometimes find myself wondering why amplification is even necessary in small venues... but the answer, I think in part, relates to audience expectations.

While a number of shows could most likely play with piano accompaniment and no microphones and be understood just fine, would audiences accept such a pared down version of the musical? Would they feel like they were getting their money's worth from a less robust instrumentation that lacks the dramatic punch of a full rock band?

Because one you add the band to fill out a modern rock musical, microphones generally become a necessity and the sound issues begin.

There aren't any easy answers to this problem, otherwise every show would sound great, all the time. The best theatres can do is to keep striving for a more perfect solution... and try to raise money for additional gear.

[Bill O'Neil]

My ears say that in general, the low end is nearly always over-boosted. This does not, IMO, make for a fuller sound; rather it makes a muddy sound. Whether engineers think this compensates for difficult room acoustic properties or they're used to music with too-loud low ends, voice clarity suffers. Dial it back to six or seven...