JBL powers rock opera at Dunedin’s Regent Theatre

Strawberry Sound recently deployed a JBL Professional sound system, provided by its local distributor JPRO, for Taieri Musical’s Jesus Christ Superstar production at Dunedin’s Regent Theatre. The system was selected to provide clarity, impact and energy to complement the rock opera show taking place on one of New Zealand’s grandest venues.

The Regent Theatre is regarded as a landmark in the region, featuring an ornate baroque-revival interior and 1,600 seats. However, the venue’s scale and architecture present significant challenges for sound designers, such as ensuring each audience member, from the front row to the circle under the balcony, hears every word and note with the same intensity.

“In a theatre like the Regent the challenge is covering all the seats while staying out of the sightlines,” explained Strawberry’s Dave Bennet, who led system engineering for the project. “You can’t just hang giant speaker arrays in front of the stage and those beautiful views. Instead, we used a mix of flown and ground-stacked arrays, discreet under-balcony fills and a few spot fills for the tricky areas.”

The main L-R arrays consisted of three VTX B18 subs with four VTX A8 per side, ground-stacked beneath the proscenium to avoid sightline issues. Additional hangs of four VTX A8 per side covered the circle, while a centre cluster of eight Vertec VT4886 was dedicated to vocals.

Under balcony dialogue coverage was provided by six AC25 units suspended discreetly from the circle’s front lighting rail, while SRX712s were called in for difficult pockets of coverage and as stage foldback. Crown I-Tech 4x3500 amplifiers ran the entire system, with JBL Performance Manager providing system control and tuning.

Bennet explained that from the outset of the project, it was clear that the performance required a distributed system: “The VTX A8’s consistent acoustic performance across its 110° horizontal coverage helps a lot when you’re pushed into the corners and planning the fills in advance was key,” he said. “We had four different generations of loudspeakers managed under one platform showing how handy Performance Manager is. It’s been a great tool for deployment, tuning and monitoring.”

Sound designer and mixer Tom Acklin of Crossfade shaped the production’s audio night after night, balancing the rock band with the vocals that drive the story forward. “Sound design for a rock musical like Jesus Christ Superstar comes with many challenges and trade-offs, but the JBL range makes it elegant,” he said. “The VTX A8 handling the band content is the heart of the system. It ticks many boxes for me as a sound designer, full-range frequency response down to 60Hz, compact size to avoid those sightline issues and a wide 110° dispersion that’s perfect for this venue.”

Acklin emphasised the mix of cabinets as a strength: “The VT4886 centre hang carries the vocals, if you’re under the balcony the AC25s are the real star. It’s all about making sure the story reaches everyone, no matter where they’re sitting.”

“The key takeaway is that the A8s are at home in this kind of deployment,” Bennet concluded. “From their wide coverage to their impressive low-end output even in small numbers, they’re an excellent choice for a musical show that needs big energy in a compact package.”