Lectrosonics treads the boards for Rock of Ages musical: “Today’s theatre audiences expect to hear live-action cinema”

Rock of Ages is the definitive jukebox musical. Originating on Broadway, it opened to a packed house and rave reviews at Toronto’s Elgin Theatre on February 23. It has all the rock ’n’ roll staples: boy meets girl and earnest musicians versus greedy business villains, all set to a roster of ‘80s classics from the likes of Bon Jovi, Poison, Whitesnake, Starship – all played by a live band onstage.

Long before he found his calling as a sound designer, John Lott graduated from high school early and wound up in theatre school to “kill some time” before he felt he was grown-up enough to attend university. Killing time turned into a lifelong passion: he never left the industry.

“I started working in the theatre industry at 20,” he recalls with a smile. “In the early ’90s, sound designers were really a new concept. Mega-musicals were also new,” he points out. “I lucked into a job working on Forever Plaid, which was supposed to be a five-week run and turned into four years.

“After that, I was introduced to a whole bunch of great folks, including Martin Levan, who was the original sound designer for Andrew Lloyd Webber. Back then he was sometimes looked at like he was eclectic because he did such unorthodox things, a lot of which have since become standard practice in musicals. He had a major influence on how consoles are used to manipulate massive sonic changes in real time.”

In Canada, Lott represents Sound Associates, which is based in New York and is a go-to sound company for broadway. With the 2023 production of the musical underway, he reflects on jumping in the deep end when he was first brought on:

“Rock of Ages is now well and truly open and doing well, but getting it up and running was a whirlwind! It was being put on by a brand-new production company called More Entertainment, and while I don’t want to say they had deep pockets, they were prepared to spend some money to get it right. The size of the project was overwhelming, and the show kept getting bigger because we kept adding more and more elements. It was fun, though,” he assures Headliner, “especially considering that Sound Associates worked the Toronto run of the show in 2010. The content is still equally entertaining to fans of this music, who are now in their 40s, 50s, and even 60s.”

When it came time to put his expertise into practice, Lott assembled a sound system that could handle lightning-speed changes and extreme dynamic range. For all things wireless, he chose Lectrosonics.

The 42-channel-plus system included a host of SSM transmitters on most cast members and an LT pack on guitar, Venue and Venue2 receiver frames with VRT modules, and the flexible Aspen DSP audio processing system serving as a monitor matrix.

Radio frequencies are coordinated using Wireless Designer software. Lott, who cut his teeth with several Andrew Lloyd Webber theatre productions, shares the unique challenges of sound for live musical theatre:

“Today’s theatre audiences expect to hear live-action cinema, with everything crystal clear and right in your face,” he explains. “For a movie or TV series, you can spend hours in post getting that exactly right. In theatre, you get maybe five kicks at the can before you have a public audience. Everything is real-time, and there are a lot of variables. Certain cast members may be different on certain nights, or maybe someone over-sang the night before and they’re tired,” he explains. “So, the system needs to be able to make everything as consistent as possible from one performance to the next.”

On the mixing side, this means wringing every last drop of scene-by-scene programmability out of a modern digital console to accommodate “the entire state changing, sometimes 10 times in the course of a single song,” Lott explains. When it comes to wireless miking, the non-negotiables include impeccable audio fidelity, tenacious RF performance, and flawless frequency coordination.

“There are 42 channels of Lectro on the talent, plus two handheld mics, plus four sets of in-ear monitors, and then six channels of wireless comms,” says Lott. “There’s a whole 1,000-seat venue above us. Then there’s Harry Potter a couple of doors down using something like 100 frequencies. So, it’s pretty saturated.”

Wireless Designer is therefore invaluable for keeping every channel in its own lane. “We do a scan every day just to make sure no RF surprises have popped up,” explains Lott. “We keep a spare receiver so we can scan during the show without any chance of affecting the show.”

Engineers and crew also need to know the RF status of every cast member at all times, and listen in, which is where Aspen comes in. “Aspen is an automated matrixing, routing, and DSP mixer-processor box,” says Lott. “We’re employing it as our onstage wireless monitoring rig. Using an iPad app, you can dial up cue mixes, individual mics or combinations, and so on. Headphones and displays are set up behind stage left and stage right for the backstage crew, so if a mic gets knocked out of place or someone’s SSM battery is low, they can fix it at the first opportunity.”

While Lott appreciates such workflow-easing features, he returns to the issue of the audience’s expectation of cinema-grade sound quality. Asked how the core pairing of SSM transmitters and Venue/Venue2 receivers have performed, he bestows a very positive review.

“With the Lectro Digital Hybrid gear, you don’t hear that companding sort of ‘fight’ you get with many other brands. You don’t hear that the sound is being crushed down for purposes of transmission. That’s crucial. We have had no issues with transmission, reception, dropouts, crosstalk, or sound quality, even in the RF-saturated Toronto theatre district. We’ve been good as gold,” he smiles.