With a multitrack split of every wireless channel from the theatre's desk, a stereo pair over the audience, the playback stems printed dry from the machine that plays them, and three performances to comp between. The NoHo Arts District holds more than twenty professional theatres inside roughly one square mile (Wikipedia), about five miles and twelve minutes from my room in Burbank by Burbank Boulevard outside the rush. The result is decided before the first performance: which microphones sit on the actors, where the split is taken, and whether the wireless rig still sits in legal spectrum.
Which stages are we talking about, and where are they?
The district is bounded by Hatteras Street, Cahuenga Boulevard, Tujunga Avenue and Camarillo Street, was organised in 1992, and its core stages sit around Lankershim and Magnolia (Wikipedia). The largest is the El Portal at 5269 Lankershim Boulevard, built in 1926 as a vaudeville and silent-film house, reopened in 2000 and marking its centennial this year: a 360-seat main stage named for Debbie Reynolds, the 96-seat Monroe Forum and the 42-seat Theatre Tribe (El Portal Theatre). A short walk north, the North Hollywood station at Lankershim and Chandler is the end of the Metro B Line subway and of the G Line busway, so a cast can arrive without a car.
North Hollywood is a neighbourhood of the City of Los Angeles; Burbank is a separate city that borders it. My earlier note on why NoHo calls itself the recording capital of the West Coast covers the studios.
What is on the actors, and does it record?
An omnidirectional miniature capsule at the hairline, on a bodypack, and yes. DPA measured identical omni capsules around a speaker against a reference microphone one metre in front: the forehead position came out almost the same as the reference, with a small peak near 800 Hz and a small dip near 1.5 kHz, consonants intact; an over-the-ear position lost everything above 1 kHz; chest and neck positions lost the 2 to 4 kHz range that carries intelligibility (DPA). For musicals DPA prefers the omni headset for its natural tone, and calls more than 30 wireless channels on one show unremarkable (DPA).
The price of an omni at the forehead is that it hears the other actors and the piano as well as its own voice. In a 96-seat house that is mostly acoustic bleed, because the system runs near unity or not at all. The dip near 1.5 kHz and the peak near 800 Hz get corrected once, on every vocal channel, in my session and never on the theatre's desk. And a chest-mounted lav on a supporting actor is a dialogue microphone, usable for the spoken scene and useless for the number, so the channel list says before the drive which numbers will need a second night.
Where is the split taken, and at what level?
Post-preamp and pre-everything. Most small houses now mix on a digital desk with a multitrack interface on the back panel: a Behringer X32 with its X-USB card streams 32 channels in and out over USB at 24-bit, 44.1 or 48 kHz (Behringer); an Allen & Heath SQ-5 has a 32 by 32 interface at 96 kHz built in (Allen & Heath). Either one is the whole split: a laptop, one cable, every receiver as its own track at the gain the theatre's mixer set.
That last part is the negotiation. Their preamp gain is my record level, and it was set for a mix. I ask for 12 dB of headroom above the loudest number at the afternoon check, inputs peaking near minus 12 dBFS on the belt, and they run the show with the faders 12 dB higher. Nobody touches the preamps after that. A digital wireless system passes that level cleanly; an analogue one puts a compander between capsule and desk, and its breathing on a whispered line is on the recording forever, so the house's system is the first question before a quote.
Where does the wireless sit after the FCC changes?
Below 608 MHz, or in the slivers the auction left. Since 13 July 2020, wireless microphones may not operate on 617 to 652 MHz or 663 to 698 MHz, the 600 MHz band sold to mobile carriers; what remains in the TV band is channels 2 to 36, below 608 MHz, plus 614 to 616 MHz in the guard band and 653 to 663 MHz in the duplex gap (FCC). Part 74 licences go to venues and sound companies that routinely run 50 or more devices; a 96-seat house with twelve packs is an unlicensed user at lower power.
Two checks in the afternoon follow. The house's frequency plan, scanned on the day, because a channel that was clean in July is not necessarily clean in September in a television market this crowded. And a fixed assignment of pack to actor for all three nights, written on the channel list, because a comp between performances only works if the same capsule on the same head lands on the same track.
Where do the band and the playback go?
Straight from the machine, dry, as separate stems. In a room this size the accompaniment is usually a piano or keyboard plus tracks from a playback rig, and the tracks are the one element with an identical tempo every night. The stems get printed from the playback computer itself, with a slate at the top of each act; the desk return is there for alignment only. A live pianist gets a spaced pair of small-diaphragm condensers inside the lid, and since the piano is already in every hairline mic, the piano channels get time-aligned to the nearest vocal mic at mix, roughly 3 ms per metre of distance, and polarity-checked against it.
The audience pair goes on the grid above the front rows. In a 96-seat room the back wall may be 10 metres from the stage, and a pair there hears the vocal about 30 ms late, which is a slap once it is mixed against the hairline channel. The pair therefore lives high-passed at 200 Hz, 15 dB under the vocal, and exists for the laughs and the applause, which is the reason a live cast album is a live cast album.
How many performances, and what gets fixed afterwards?
Three, and the fix list is written on the second night. Every number needs one pass without a dropped line, a late entrance or a cough in the rest, and three nights give that more often than two. Comping between nights is limited to what shares a tempo: numbers on tracks comp freely, numbers with a live pianist comp only at phrase boundaries where the tempo happens to match.
Afterwards, in Burbank: RF hits, 20 to 50 ms dropouts, replaced from another night at the nearest phrase; dialogue trims where the scene runs longer than the album needs; the 800 Hz and 1.5 kHz correction on every vocal channel; and pitch, handled the way the note on how much correction a lead vocal needs describes, with the vibrato left alone and only the sustained notes moved. Records I have mixed and mastered are listed with sources at /credits.
Frequently asked
Is North Hollywood a city? No. It is a neighbourhood of the City of Los Angeles, and the NoHo Arts District is a community inside it, bounded by Hatteras Street, Cahuenga Boulevard, Tujunga Avenue and Camarillo Street. Burbank, next door, is a separate city with its own government.
How many theatres are in the NoHo Arts District? More than twenty professional theatres inside the district, and 31 in and around it by Wikipedia's count. The El Portal alone runs three stages: 360, 96 and 42 seats.
Can wireless microphones still use the 600 MHz band? Not on 617 to 652 MHz or 663 to 698 MHz, since 13 July 2020. TV channels 2 to 36 below 608 MHz remain available, with small portions of the guard band and the duplex gap, and there are unlicensed bands at 900 MHz, 1.9 GHz and 2.4 GHz.
If a show in NoHo needs a record of itself
Send the channel list, the desk model and the dates of three performances. The reply is a one-page plan: where the split is taken, the headroom for the afternoon check, and which numbers need a second night. Background and contact at /about.