NEW YORK – The 75-year-old Diamond Horseshoe reopened recently within the Paramount Hotel here after a $20 million restoration. The venue’s opening show, with booking only through April 13, is Queen of the Night, a multi-room fusion of performance, music, circus, cuisine, design and nightlife. Masque Sound provided a solution that lets sound designers walk into any room with a tablet or computer and be able to adjust the audio levels.
More details from Masque Sound (www.MasqueSound.com):
Queen of the Night is a fusion of performance, music, circus, cuisine, design and nightlife that welcomes the audience into a wholly interactive entertainment experience. The show is very heavy in terms of audio playback and takes place in numerous rooms. Because of these factors, the sound designers turned to Masque Sound to provide a solution that would allow them to walk into any room with a tablet or computer, and be able to adjust the audio levels, so that they could define the very specific sound that they were looking for.
Masque Sound, a leading theatrical sound reinforcement, installation and design company, was called upon by Co-Sound Designers Charles Coes and Darron L West to provide the house sound system for the new immersive, theatrical dinner experience, Queen of the Night, at the newly renovated Diamond Horseshoe at The Paramount Hotel. The limited run officially opened to rave reviews on February 2, 2014.
Queen of the Night is a fusion of performance, music, circus, cuisine, design and nightlife that welcomes the audience into a wholly interactive entertainment experience. From 1938 to 1951, Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe operated in the basement of the Paramount. Known for its vaudeville-style revues, the club featured the day’s top entertainers and even inspired a 1940s movie musical. Seventy-five years after the club first opened, and following a $20 million renovation, Diamond Horseshoe is a prime midtown nightlife destination and venue for environmental theatrical experiences, events and other unique programming overseen by Variety Worldwide, LLC and LDV Hospitality. The 6,000-square-foot ballroom features two bars, a brand new kitchen, banquet style tables and various private rooms.
Queen of the Night is very heavy in terms of audio playback and takes place in numerous rooms. Because of these factors, the sound designers turned to Masque Sound to provide a solution that would allow them to walk into any room with a tablet or computer, and be able to adjust the audio levels, so that they could define the very specific sound that they were looking for.
In consultation with Masque Sound, Coes and West put together a Dante digital sound network that allows them the ability to control anything in the space and send audio to anywhere within the space. “Because we are covering more than 20 individual rooms with more than 48-channels of playback and 36-channels of control beyond that playback, we felt the Dante system was the best option to achieve our goal,” says Coes. “With the Dante network, we can send instructions to any individual speaker in the entire venue through a combination of console, DME and QLab.
Considering Masque Sound’s superb track record, it comes as no surprise that the company was extremely helpful and knowledgeable in addressing the unique requirements of this interactive show. Because we had the support of a shop with such a large resource pool, we were able, as a sound department, to turn things around in one day.”
Dante is a combination of software, hardware and network protocols that deliver uncompressed, multi-channel, low-latency digital audio over a standard Ethernet network. In addition to the Dante network, the main room is made up entirely of NEXO sound system combinations, which is starting to generate a lot of interest within the New York sound reinforcement community. The room features GEO mains with PS10 and PS8 fills, and surround using NXamp 4×1 and RS 18s. The signal flow is entirely digital, from playback to amplifier, all using the Dante standard. This allowed Coes and West to be able to use the network and send audio straight from their computers to the console for the mix, making it very easy to direct signal.
“We have been through a lot of changes in what the soundtracks are and what the acts are,” adds Coes. “It has been a long developmental process but one that really started to gel and come together in the preview process, and Masque Sound was once again, incredibly supportive. Scott Kalata on the business side and the shop staff were extremely helpful in quickly finding solutions to problems as new things came up. The only real restriction on what we could achieve was how quickly we could turn our ideas into reality.”
