Jonathan deans

New York, NY (April 21, 2025)—Ideally, theater takes us away from our surroundings, transporting us far from our seats to other places—so long as those places fit on a stage. However, Redwood, a new Broadway musical, takes audiences to a space that can’t fit in any playhouse, hundreds of feet above the ground in the canopy of the show’s namesake trees. Creating a multi-sensory experience that envelops audiences and brings them closer to the sky, the show cleverly makes use of integrated staging, lighting and video, all bolstered by an immersive soundscape created by sound designer Jonathan Deans.  Staged at Broadway’s Nederlander Theatre, the show stars Tony Award-winner Idina Menzel as Jesse, a New Yorker recovering from a horrible tragedy. Impetuously driving cross-country to Northern California, she soon meets a pair of scientists…and a tree. Before long, they suit up in rappelling equipment and climb among the redwoods, where Jesse’s emotional journey continues. Throughout the show, Deans’ sound design, heard through audio equipment provided by PRG, evokes the characters’ surroundings, whether it’s the familiar jostle of New York City just outside the theater itself or the undulating serenity of a forest 3,000 miles away. However, the soundscape also underscores Jesse’s psychological state at any given moment, immersing the audience not only in the peacefulness of the redwoods, but also the emotional thunderstorm raging within the character as well. “This production needs a multichannel, immersive system because of the kind of music and the type of visual impacts,” said Deans. “The sound has to ‘belong’ to what you’re seeing. The thing about sound is that if you’re doing something badly and it doesn’t belong at all, then it becomes noticeable and that’s a problem. The more it belongs, the less it’s noticed—so I’m very aware of the audience not being aware of it.” As a result, the audio is enveloping, but not immersive in a showy way, as Deans opted to make the sound and even the music feel organic to the story’s surroundings. “I want to create the feeling that you’re in it,” he explained. “It’s not coming at you; you’re in the middle of it. The orchestra feels like a blanket of sound that comes around you and keeps you warm, so it’s a cozy feeling to go with what you’re seeing.” Meyer Sound UP-4slim loudspeakers are used for immersive sound throughout the Nederlander Theatre’s underbalcony area, going all the way back to the DiGiCo Quantum 7 console at the house mix position. PHOTO: Clive Young. Most of the story takes place among the redwoods, so Deans duly went to Northern California to capture binaural recordings of the forest. “I went to record ‘nothing’—well, what would be considered nothing, but actually it’s a lot,” he laughed. “I had to find somewhere where people were not—which took a long time because people are always milling around. You need an open space where you can just feel and hear the air. The recording on its own has movement to it, purely as a factor of where the microphones were placed. I didn’t add to the sound, but I did pull the sound apart in order to make that recording work in the format of a theater. I had to make sure it didn’t break—and it didn’t; it became true, so we play the binaural back every time you’re in the redwoods in the show.” Creating a sense of veracity for the audience, where every seat in the house feels like it’s up in the redwoods canopy, paid off in other ways, because that realism let other potential audio issues slide. Jesse and the scientists spend much of the show wearing rappelling harnesses, but that climbing gear includes metal buckles and carabiners that noticeably clank together and are picked up through the cast’s DPA headset microphones. Deans remembers, “The carabiners clinking on each other—initially, it was, ‘Oh, this is never going to work; can we do something about this?’ And of course, no, you can’t, because this is a safety issue; they’re climbing.” The actors were taught how to put on harnesses and climb for the show, and as they became more familiar and confident with the equipment, it turned out they made fewer errant clanks as a result. Now the occasional jangles that are picked up by the mics simply blend in as an organic part of the moment and don’t distract the audience. The five-member cast and nine-piece orchestra are mixed on a DiGiCo Quantum 7 console, chosen for its DSP and integrated control of Meyer Sound’s Spacemap Go immersive loudspeaker system. The entire P.A. is controlled by Meyer’s Galileo Galaxy and D-Mitri network platforms. “We use D-Mitri to handle the multichannel output of all the surrounds, and within that, we use Spacemap for the movement of the surrounds,” Deans explained. For Broadway’s Redwood (l-r), Khaila Wilcoxon, Michael Park, Idina Menzel, Zachary Noah Piser and De’Adre Aziza are heard via DPA headset mics. PHOTO: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman for Murphy Made. Recognizing that audience members will see the show differently depending on where they’re seated, Deans opted to embrace that and design four multichannel surround systems—orchestra, under balcony, front and rear balcony—that lean into those unique experiences. “We don’t want to make it all the same, because otherwise you end up with mono,” he said. “You get to enjoy the fact that you’re in this space, having this sonic adventure.” The result is a complex loudspeaker arrangement based around 16 Meyer Sound Leopard and 18 Lina line array speakers. Also employed are two Ultra-X40, 14 Ultra-X20, and 16 Ultra-X22 point-source loudspeakers and 56 UP-4slim ultracompact loudspeakers, many of which are used throughout the underbalcony area to the very back of the auditorium. Elsewhere, there are UPA‑2P and UPJ-1P boxes, as well as a variety of subwoofers, including four 1100-LFC, three 900‑LFC and two 750- LFC. Bringing Louis Armstrong Back to Broadway A further 26 loudspeakers are installed onstage. “I put stage monitors in the floor pointing up whenever I can on a production, because when you’re walking around up there, it provides a very even dispersion,” said Deans. “That sounds a little intense, but it’s really not— and it sounds a little expensive, but it’s really not. It gives the actors a constant, unified level of what’s happening onstage, and you don’t have a sidefill speaker in the proscenium potentially feeding back as they move closer to it.” The tightly integrated performances, direction, staging, lighting, video and sound of Redwood combine to create a literally evocative experience for theatergoers. “There’s a number of reviews that mentioned an environmental sound in a particular scene—but we don’t have that sound in the show!” Deans said in amazement. “That’s all the elements working together—the visuals and where the music’s placed and the intensity of Idina Menzel singing and performing. It creates this incredible feeling that conjures up personal experiences, and clearly it triggers these things that people then comment on. That is incredibly exciting, actually, because that’s what you want to give the audience: a unique experience that you cannot have anywhere else. That’s what I’m interested in—creating that experience in the theater.”

SoundBank’s considerable control room. PHOTO: Shona and Mark McKinney/River Oak Media. Talco, TX (July 29, 2024)—Talco was just another quiet East Texas town until 1936, when the state’s largest oil deposit up to that time was discovered nearby. Almost overnight, the population ballooned as the town took to calling itself “the asphalt capital of the world” and oil derricks extended to the horizon. Eventually the boom days ended, the industry moved on and the town rightsized itself back into a sleepy destination—a process that left a pale brick, single-story bank sitting empty on Talco’s main drag until local entrepreneurs Malachi and Drea Sandoval stumbled across it. The Sandovals had long wanted to bring more music to the area by opening a destination recording studio—a place where musicians could get off the beaten path, explore the Texan countryside and create. The bank fit the bill perfectly, and they snapped it up for a song. “We are such lovers of music; it got us together as a couple, so we’ve always shared that,” Drea Sandoval says. “To find an avenue into the industry was really cool, and I felt like it was divinely led.” The multi-room facility was soon dubbed SoundBank Studios. At first, the couple took a DIY approach to renovating the site, but soon changed course. “After rebuilding walls a few times, we quickly learned that we needed an expert that understands and lives music, design, and engineering,” Malachi shares. Taking pride of place in the 500-square-foot A room is a 56-channel SSL 4000 G+ console. PHOTO: Shona and Mark McKinney/River Oak Media. The Sandovals asked recording engineer Rick Rooney, president of Planet Dallas Studios, for a recommendation and were soon talking with California-based acoustician Carl Yanchar, who in turn brought in frequent collaborator Jonathan Deans of recording studio design-build firm Wavespace. “They have a rare combination of skills,” Yanchar says. “Having them execute not only construction but also wiring design, system integration, and acoustic installation ensured a streamlined process and helped elevate each aspect of the project.” Together, the Sandovals, Wavespace and Yanchar Design and Consulting developed a floor plan to accommodate three control rooms, including a Dolby Atmos mix room, and a large tracking space into approximately 4,500 square feet, together with four iso rooms, multiple machine rooms and associated sound locks. Client amenities include a kitchen and a lounge. “I didn’t know what we were going to do with the bank vaults until Jonathan came in and helped us,” Malachi Sandoval admits. “We decided to turn one into a vocal booth and the other into a C room for stereo mixing and preproduction.” Taking pride of place in the 500-square-foot A room is a 56-channel SSL 4000 G+ console, which was customized for SoundBank and given a clean bill of health by Bruce Millett, the Desk Doctor, based in Burbank, Calif. The SSL desk may be a focal point, but the eye is also drawn to an impressive four-bay rack of new and vintage outboard gear and a pair of soffit-mounted ATC SCM110ASL main monitors. SoundBank’s large live room has space for everyone. PHOTO: Shona and Mark McKinney/River Oak Media. The outboard rack offers plenty of preamp and processing options. If a client doesn’t want to use the SSL mic preamps, well, there are 28 channels of 1073/1084-style channels from Neve, BAE, Heritage Audio and Aurora Audio, not to mention multiple Chandler Limited EMI recreations plus numerous channels of API/ CAPI. The rack is also stacked with equalizers and compressor/limiters from Pultec, Manley, API, Empirical Labs, dbx, Retro, Tube-Tech, Altec and others. The mic closet offers pretty much anything a client might desire, including a pair of Neumann U 87s, a handful of Coles 4038s and both Bock and Telefunken 251s. The A room’s Avid Pro Tools rig is paired with Lynx Aurora converters. Malachi spent the last couple of years educating himself on the premium audio equipment that he was going to need for the new venture. “I learned a lot on the internet, and I also met Taylor Kimball, who is now managing the studio with us,” he says. “Taylor turned me on to his salespeople at Sweetwater and Vintage King; I was able to make some amazing purchases through those guys.” Kimball, a locally based producer and engineer who has worked on a string of projects with Texas country-rockers such as Koe Wetzel, Treaty Oak Revival, and Wyatt Flores, has also merged his stash of pro audio gear, instruments and amplifiers with the studio’s collection. For the guitar amps, Kimball had Wavespace integrate an amp head patchbay routing system which would allow the facility to send any guitar amp heads to pre-miked guitar cabs in the live room and iso booths, allowing for quick access to a wide variety of guitar tones. “Being able to react to a sonic idea or texture on the fly was huge for us; swapping amps with cabs and having that variety accessible in the control room has been a game changer,” Kimball adds. The Dolby Atmos mix room is outfitted with 11 Meyer Sound Amie speakers and two Amie subs. PHOTO: Shona and Mark McKinney/River Oak Media. There’s other networking involved in the facility as well. “We also integrated a video routing system with PTZ cameras throughout the facility. At the touch of a button, not only can you ISO record every room, but also livestream full-resolution sound from the SSL,” Deans says. That enables artists to broadcast live to YouTube, Twitch or other platforms or record behind-the-scenes action. “Nowadays, it’s all about content capture.” Meanwhile, the Dolby Atmos room is outfitted with 11 Meyer Sound Amie speakers and a pair of Amie subs. A pair of Macs are on-hand—one for Pro Tools and the other operating Dolby’s RMU software; the room passes 128 channels from Pro Tools into the RMU. “We do the classic Atmos pitch and catch via Dante,” Deans elaborates. While the building’s structure resulted in some parallel surfaces, Deans continues, the flat fabric finishes in the rooms mask a mix of acoustical treatment: “Behind the fabric, there are different angled panels, with some of the surfaces absorptive and some diffusive. We didn’t want to over-absorb or try to correct something in the frequency domain, then end up with problems in the time domain.” In the live room, he adds, “There is what we call a soffit trap for bass trapping around the perimeter, and one wall has a curtain that you can pull back to make it live or dead.” A former bank vault is now the Soundbank C room for stereo mixing and preproduction. PHOTO: Shona and Mark McKinney/River Oak Media. The result was a room that met everyone’s criteria. “After listening to the A-room and seeing the room measurements, we were really thrilled with the results,” says Kimball. Tuning the main monitors required minimal effort thanks to Yanchar’s acoustic design, he adds: “They made very light adjustments, just sweetening. Those ATCs sound incredible.” SoundBank Studios got off to a flying start when it opened in February 2024 and has been solidly booked since. “Our very first band was Ole 60, a young band from Kentucky who are blowing up right now,” Malachi Sandoval reports. Kimball engineered, produced and mixed “Next to You,’ a new single by the group, whose debut EP went straight to the top of the Apple Music Country Album and iTunes charts. Renowned Record Plant Studio Shutters The Sandovals have positioned SoundBank as a destination studio, marketing the facility’s considerable amenities in tandem with another of their properties. “We have a ranch with a five-bedroom house and a beautiful attic space, which we’re also turning into a studio—we’re trying to make it a writer’s retreat,” Malachi says. “It’s secluded, with lakes and amazing fishing. We’re still also working on an outside bar and patio space at the studio, so we’re trying to put together the total package.” “We wanted to create a versatile creative space,” Drea Sandoval agrees. “If you want solitude, alone time and recuperation, it’s there. If you’d like to hang out and fish, that’s also there. It’s a good Texas experience.”