It is no accident that Radio City Music Hall has the word music in the title. While the venue's name is often shortened to simply “Radio City,” its attention to music and sound has always set the theatre apart. This was certainly the case when I saw Les Misérables: The Arena Concert Spectacular on a balmy New York summer night.
Right out of the gate, the sound was jaw-dropping.
The orchestra was perched above the action on an elevated stage – far better than burying it in a traditional Broadway pit. I love seeing violin bows sweep through space and the timpanist’s mallets strike the drumheads. I could hear and see the blazing buzz of the horns and trombones, the crack of the snare, the breath and spit of the woodwinds.
Then that ocean of orchestral sound parted and the singing began.
Just when I thought the audio experience couldn’t get any better, I was swept into another world not only by some of the purest voices I have heard on a stage, but by the clarity of the vocal sound itself. At moments it was as if I were sitting in Studio A at the Power Station – only with room for nearly 6,000 other listeners.
With sound this good, I could probably have experienced the entire performance with my eyes closed.
There was, however, absolutely no chance of that. The visual production was every bit as dazzling as what I was hearing.
Massive video screens delivered close-ups of the performers in extraordinary detail: sweat beading, brows furrowing, every flicker of emotion visible as the singers tore through some of musical theatre’s most demanding repertoire. The experience landed somewhere between watching Bryan Adams at Madison Square Garden, Aida at the Met, and The Outsiders on Broadway.
Arena concert, Broadway musical, cinema and high fidelity — all wrapped into one.
So how was this achieved?
The biggest piece of the puzzle is something relatively new to Radio City: the Sphere Immersive Sound system. Installed in late 2025, the system was developed by Sphere Entertainment with German audio company Holoplot. Originally developed for the Sphere in Las Vegas, the goal, as noted in Mix Magazine “is to “provide consistent audio across all seats, aiming to give every row the same sound experience.”
According to Mix, Radio City’s system uses more than 7,000 individually powered Holoplot loudspeaker drivers, with additional L-Acoustics speakers providing surround and under-balcony coverage. MSG Entertainment describes the underlying technology as “3D audio beamforming and wave field synthesis,” which allows engineers to position and spatialize sound throughout the theatre with far greater precision than a conventional left-right PA. That distinction became spectacularly clear during the barricade scenes.
Gunshots didn’t simply blast out of speakers. Bullets seemed to whiz past my ears causing me to duck. Cannon fire and ricochets thundered and cracked through the hall. I initially wondered if I was hearing some sort of gigantic 7.1 surround system. The answer is considerably more sophisticated.
Sound designer Mick Potter with mixers Andy Waddell and Neil Watson worked specifically with Sphere Immersive Sound for the Radio City engagement. According to Andrew Keister of the Radio City team, preparation began months before the production arrived. Potter’s team spent two days in the venue’s Immersive Mix Suite experimenting with spatialization and adapting its existing effects to take advantage of the system.
And it wasn’t simply used to make bullets fly.
The immersive system was employed to heighten the swell of “Who Am I?,” intensify Éponine’s scream, and Javert’s death, create the otherworldly presence of the ghost of Fantine, and pull the audience physically and emotionally into the battle at the barricades.
That is the important distinction: spatial audio was being used as part of the storytelling, not simply as a technological party trick.
Remarkably, the production did not have to abandon the audio system it had already been touring with. Mix reported that the show used a pair of DiGiCo SD-series consoles supplied by the respected London theatrical audio company Autograph Sound. The tour’s familiar mix then feeds Radio City’s immersive system downstream.
That compatibility is important. Radio City presents touring artists constantly; nobody wants to rebuild an entire show around a proprietary console every time they enter the building.
The performers themselves present another interesting compromise between concert and theatre. Principal singers wear head-worn microphones and earpieces, hardware that becomes extremely obvious when a performer’s face suddenly fills a huge screen. Along the front of the stage are also slender stand-mounted vocal microphones for the ensemble.
In a conventional Broadway production, the goal might be to make all of this technology disappear. Not so here. This production was as much concert as theatre, and the creative team wisely chose uncompromised audio quality over the illusion that the technology wasn’t there. They did, however, wisely draw the line at handheld microphones. Nobody really wants Jean Valjean clutching a mic like Mick Jagger.
In an interview with The Theatre Times, co-director Jean-Pierre Van Der Spuy explained that arena-scale propagation delays made monitoring particularly challenging, so the performers were provided with earpieces. He also described a split audio workflow, with one team mixing for the audience and separate monitor engineers working from positions at the sides of the stage.
Radio City adds another tool to that equation. In comments provided for this article, David Dibble explained that Sphere Immersive Sound can use its directional control to create what he calls “stage avoidance,” steering more of the PA energy away from the performers and reducing the amount of sound spilling back onto the stage.
This is a huge live audio undertaking. More than 40 performers can be singing simultaneously, while Van Der Spuy puts the touring orchestra at 28 musicians. And despite all of that – orchestra, singers, wireless systems, playback, effects and monitoring – I did not hear a moment of feedback or bad sound all evening. Except for the occasional cannon blast, I didn’t once put my fingers in my ears or wince.
Could the impeccable sound by the result of an AI sound mixer? Absolutely not.
Andrew Keister explained that while the consoles employ some automation, “the art of live mixing is inherently manual.” The battle effects are no exception: according to Keister, the mixer manually triggers the sound-effect sequences, while the effects themselves were specially adapted and spatialized to take advantage of Sphere Immersive Sound.
There is also a surprisingly traditional theatrical chain of command underneath all this technology. In the interview with The Theatre Times, Van Der Spuy explained that deputy stage manager Rachel “runs the show,” calling the lighting and sound-effect cues as the performance unfolds. From there, the production’s separate sound teams handle the house mix and the performers’ monitor mixes.
The video system plays a similarly interesting game between old-fashioned live performance and new technology. Even with excellent orchestra seats, it was a joy to look up at the massive screens from time to time. Van Der Spuy also told The Theatre Times that while some material was filmed in advance, “most of the time it’s live feed.” Two cameras positioned at the sides of the stage provide images that the projection team can augment with special effects in real time. Just as importantly, the production knows when to turn the technology off: Van Der Spuy explained that during emotionally crucial moments such as the deaths of Fantine and Éponine, the screens go dark so the audience’s attention returns entirely to the performers onstage.
That is truly smart and sensitive design. They knew when it was time to dial back the technology.
One visual element initially confused me. High above the stage hung what looked from my seat like bizarre collapsed building with lighting instruments attached underneath it. Much of the time it remained raised, but during the revolutionary scenes it descended. Then its purpose became clear.
The movable overhead structures actually assemble into the metal framework of the barricade, becoming scenery, lighting infrastructure and performance space at the same time. Revolutionaries can even move across it. What at first looked to me like an ungainly lighting rig turned out to be one of the cleverer pieces of scenic engineering in the production.
Heavy haze makes the lighting visible in the air, at times turning beams into something almost physical. Light fractured and poured through the atmosphere as though passing through bullet holes in a ruined wall.
All of this was fascinating to me as a composer and producer. I found myself analyzing everything: Where are the microphones? Who is mixing the monitors? How are those bullets moving behind me? Is that video live? What console are they using? How on earth is the conductor communicating with everyone?
But I had brought someone with me who wasn't thinking about any of those things.
My ten-year-old daughter. By intermission, at around 9pm, parental anxiety kicked in. This was a long evening. I wondered whether she was getting tired, bored or simply antsy. “No, Daddy!” she chirped when I suggested the possibility of leaving. “I want to stay to the end.” She was as dazzled by it as I was.
But what really grabbed her were the two child characters, Little Cosette and Gavroche. My daughter watched them with an intensity I hadn't noticed earlier. “I want to be up there one day, Daddy!” And maybe that was the best technical review of the evening.
I had spent the night thinking about Holoplot drivers, DiGiCo consoles, headsets, in-ear monitors, live cameras, haze, automation, beamforming and spatial audio. She wasn't thinking about any of that. She just wanted to be on stage.
For all of the extraordinary technology involved in Les Misérables: The Arena Concert Spectacular, perhaps that is the real measure of its success. The technology did not need to hide. We embraced it as part of the spectacle, and the art was truly free to soar.
Source Notes
Direct correspondence: Technical information regarding Mick Potter, Andy Waddell, Neil Watson, the Radio City Immersive Mix Suite, spatial treatment of specific effects, stage avoidance, ensemble vocal count and manual triggering of effects came from written responses provided by Andrew Keister and David Dibble for this article.
Mix: ‘Les Mis’ Goes Immersive at Radio City Music Hall,” Aug. 6, 2026 — Radio City system configuration, Holoplot and L-Acoustics loudspeakers, DiGiCo SD-series consoles and Autograph Sound. Source
MSG Entertainment: “MSG Entertainment Takes Radio City Music Hall Into the Future With Introduction of Sphere Immersive Sound,” Oct. 9, 2025 — 3D beamforming, wave field synthesis, 7,000-plus individually amplified drivers and stage-directionality technology. Source
The Theatre Times: Interview with Claude-Michel Schönberg and Jean-Pierre Van Der Spuy, Sept. 13, 2026 — orchestra size, performer monitoring, sound teams, DSM cueing, live-camera workflow, child casting and moving barricade structures. Source
Julian Harris ● Julian Harris Productions ● [email protected] ● p: (917) 669-1965