We All Want to be Heard

This year the Academy of St. Dorothy's drama club production of "Oliver" featured live sound production from First Class Sound Productions, under the ownership of Alfred Ragone (former alumni- class of 2002 and a member of four ASD productions as a "Can-Do Kid".)

The sound system was designed to provide excellent live sound to the audience, and allow the actors and actresses to be heard at the furthest point of the auditorium. The design featured the main four characters: (Oliver, the Artful Dodger, Fagan, and Nancy) having live microphones throughout the entire show, being the four characters with the most dialogue. There were also four other headset microphones used that were alternated between various characters throughout the different scenes. A combined 12 different characters shared the other 4 microphones.

The microphones used were SHURE PGX-14 Wireless Headsets that are connected to PGX1 receivers. The 8 microphones were connected (wireless) to 8 receivers that the engineer controlled from the sound booth in the rear of the auditorium. The 8 receivers were then connected to a SoundCraft MFXi sound board. The sound engineer controlled which performers would have their microphones on and also controlled the overall volume balance to make sure the louder actors were lower than the softer volume actors to provide a good balance.

The sound engineer also provided two Audio Technica AT8035 "Shotgun Microphones" that were both angled at 45 degrees to the center of the stage. This would allow the actors and actresses that were not wearing microphones to be heard, and also helped increase the volume of the performers during group musical numbers.

Finally, the SoundCraft sound board was fed via microphone snake to the front of the auditorium to a QSC RMX-2450 Powered Amplifier which powered the two main satellite speakers in the auditorium. The two main speakers were JBL SoundFactor-15 PA Speakers. This system was one that peaks at 2,000 Watts, which was more than sufficient for the amount of people watching the show. The snake also fed a Yamaha STAGEPAS-150M powered mixer, which fed a Yamaha speaker in the dressing room of the theater so the performers could hear the show as it was being performed.

I was fortunate enough to retrieve this information from Mr. Ragone himself. Having started his own DJ company and his own show on WSJU Radio (St. John's University's radio station) "DJ Derf" is available to host any of your parties and use his top notch products to do so. Since I attended St. Dorothy's performance of "Oliver" I am here to tell you that the sound quality that emanated from the microphones were amazing.