A milestone for LD Systems – immersive audio installation for the acclaimed New York Broadway musical Masquerade
- juliana6232
- 31 minutes ago
- 2 min read
The musical Masquerade has been captivating visitors and critics alike in New York City since the end of July 2025. The extraordinary concept for this production – directed by Tony Award winner Diane Paulus – is enthralling audiences not only with its reinterpretation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's classic musical The Phantom of the Opera but also with an immersive experience that transcends traditional theatre boundaries. Instead of having fixed seats, guests move freely through a multi-storey building in Midtown Manhattan and are right in the middle of the action. The special room architecture and the constant change of audience positions have placed extreme demands on the sound system, for which sound designer Brett Jarvis was responsible – a challenge that has been solved with the most extensive LD Systems audio installation the world has seen to date.
The requirements for the entire audio and PA system were extraordinary: uniform sound distribution across several very differently designed rooms, maximum speech intelligibility at every angle, minimal susceptibility to feedback with headsets and lavalier microphones, natural high-frequency reproduction for classical arrangements, and powerful low-frequency reproduction for organ sounds – all embedded in an immersive sound design. In addition, the loudspeakers had to be integrated so unobtrusively into the scenery that they did not disturb the immersive experience – especially as the audience is often only a few metres away from the performers.
“From the very first meeting with sound designer Brett Jarvis and
Andrew Lloyd Webber producer Lee McCutcheon, it became clear that we had to pull out all the stops for Masquerade,” explains Jens Kleinhuis, Pro Audio Field Application Engineer with the Adam Hall Group.
Together with Ivan Klepac, Integrated Systems Field Application Engineer from the integrated systems project support team, an audio setup was created over the course of several demo dates and training sessions that is unrivalled in the history of LD Systems and Adam Hall Integrated Systems: over 1,000 speakers – including around 660 CURV 500 satellites, 186 DQOR and over 80 MAILA array systems alone – ensure that the audience is right in the middle of the action at Masquerade wherever they are.
In addition to MAILA, DQOR and the CURV 500 systems, the Masquerade producers have made use of the entire LD Systems portfolio: MAUI i1 in-line speakers and CFL in-ceiling systems through to the new ICOA PRO SUB 21 A high-performance subwoofers. Even a pair of ANNY 8 Bluetooth® PA speakers was used. The complete system is driven and controlled by 68 IPA 424 T 4
-channel installation amplifiers, each equipped with an X-EDAI Ethernet & Dante expansion card to integrate all components into the existing Dante network.
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