Category: Loudspeakers

When director Rupert Goold and sound designer Cody Spencer began planning Dog Day Afternoon for Broadway, their starting point was a play, not a musical. No songs, no score to carry the story. But the 1975 Sidney Lumet film it is based on has one of the most recognizable sonic identities in cinema history: the relentless pulse of a New York summer, a crowd that grows angrier by the hour, and a climax that drops from the sky. Spencer’s challenge was to bring all of that into the August Wilson Theatre on 52nd Street and make a live audience feel it. His answer was L-Acoustics L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound, and a speaker system that raised more than a few eyebrows.

Starring Jon Bernthal and Eben Moss-Bachrach, Dog Day Afternoon tells the true story of Sonny Wortzik’s 1972 Brooklyn bank robbery, a botched heist that turned into an hours-long standoff with police and a media circus. The play uses music strategically throughout: 1970s classic rock dropped with cinematic precision, a crowd participation sequence built around the infamous Attica! chant, and a helicopter descent that closes the show. None of it is incidental. Spencer designed the entire sound world with the same care a film sound supervisor would bring to a feature. The system he built to deliver it is, as PRG Vice President of Audio David Strang puts it, the size of your average musical.

“I remember Cody telling me what he was imagining, and I thought: That’s fantastic—you’re going to be the first person to put a musical-scale speaker system into a Broadway play,” says Strang, whose company provided the sound reinforcement for the production.

Spencer was unequivocal about why the scale was necessary. “I wanted the music to be big and full, not just heavy on the low end or oversaturated,” he explains. “I needed it to feel like you’re watching a film, where the music drops in and fills the whole room. That’s what led me to L-Acoustics and L-ISA.”

Designing the Sonic Architecture of a Street Siege

Spencer initially sketched a conventional left-right-center configuration with some playback. Then the conversations with Goold pushed the concept further. The set rotates between the interior of the bank and the street outside, and Goold wanted the crowd, which is gathered just beyond the doors, and invisible to the audience, to be a constant presence. As the perspective

shifts from inside to outside, sound filters open and close, drawing the audience into the sonic point of view of the characters. At one point, the audience itself becomes the crowd.

“With L-ISA, I knew I could make every seat in the house feel like the crowd is just on the other side of that wall,” Spencer says. “I’ve used it enough to trust it completely.”

Beyond the crowd, Spencer built up subliminal low-frequency tension throughout the show, seeding the soundscape with random New York street sounds that blend with the actual ambient noise that sometimes drifts into the theater from West 52nd Street. The 1970s rock tracks accumulate in intensity toward the helicopter finale, designed to land as a full physical event. Even sub coverage was an explicit priority, something Spencer says he had never before tackled to this degree.

Four L-Acoustics SB10i were mounted to the underbalcony ceiling to ensure consistent low-frequency extension across the room. “I spent a lot of time with L-Acoustics system engineers on this,” Spencer says. “We developed a tuning approach so the SB10i deliver a small amount of sub energy on their own, and when combined with the mains they maintain exactly the same level as you move under the balcony. The coverage is seamless.”

L-Acoustics Soundvision was central to the design process. Spencer used it to model sub coverage on the vertical plane, an unconventional application, but one that gave him the acoustic data he needed before a single cabinet was hung.

A Scene System Built for Object-Based Immersion with L-ISA A Series

The main system is built around a split L-ISA Scene configuration of five A Series arrays, each comprising a single A15 Focus over two A15 Wide, flown over the stage lip. A second tier of five A Series arrays, this time one A10 Focus over one A10 Wide, provide spatial delays to the front mezzanine.

Two cardioid subwoofer hangs of three SB18 flank the center A Series array in the main Scene system. These are complemented by the four ceiling-mounted SB10i. Seven ultra-compact X4i run along the stage lip, with two colinear Syva systems positioned as orchestra sources. The under-mezzanine delays comprise eight X4i, seven X8, and seven 5XT, with seven additional X8 handling mezzanine delays in the balcony. Four 5XT serve as near-fills and mezzanine fills.

The surround system is extensive: eight Syva and 34 X8 provide discrete immersive coverage across multiple seating zones spanning the full orchestra and both mezzanine levels. On stage, a pair of X8 and one 5XT reinforce stage sources directly, while two X12 flown above the deck give performers monitoring. The entire system is driven by an L-ISA Processor II, with object-based mix control managed via an L-ISA Controller paired to a DiGiCo SD10T console at front of house.

Strang notes that Spencer’s use of the Syva deserves particular attention. “He’s blending different parts of the system together using the Syva in ways I hadn’t seen before,” he explains.

L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound: Clarity, Control, and the Cody Spencer Method

Spencer came to L-ISA through a deliberate creative progression. His first use of the technology was on Broadway Bounty Hunter, and he subsequently brought it to Here Lies Love—the first time L-ISA was deployed on Broadway. He won the 2024 Tony Award for Best Sound Design of a Musical for The Outsiders, deploying L-ISA to place the audience inside the world of the Greasers and the Socs. With Dog Day Afternoon, he is applying the same approach to the specific demands of a play.

Because Dog Day Afternoon is a comedy with densely layered dialogue, Spencer leaned harder on close-miking than he typically would for a straight play. L-ISA’s object-based processing gave him the ability to isolate each voice and assign it to a specific speaker or group of speakers, increasing clarity without losing naturalism. “I can give an individual speaker to a single mic, and that isolation gives you a lot more clarity in scenes where multiple people are talking,” he says.

He also credits recent advances in L-ISA, specifically the new source trims feature, with making the process faster. “I can finesse the levels in every fill, delay, and zone to make sure the coverage is complete,” Spencer explains. “Music, sound effects, and vocals are the three main groups, and the goal is that every seat has the same sonic experience. L-ISA gives you the tools to actually achieve that, not just aim for it.”

A Full Score

The production’s climax is a test of everything the system can do. The Attica! sequence draws the audience into the scene, the sound places them on the street outside the bank with the crowd surrounding them. When the helicopter arrives, L-ISA renders it as a physical presence overhead, with the sub hangs and ceiling-mounted SB10i combining to create a sensation that has been causing genuine double-takes in the house.

“The Attica! moment is when you realize the system is doing exactly what we designed it to do,” Spencer says. “The audience isn’t watching a crowd, they’re inside one. And when the helicopter comes in at the end, people genuinely look up. That’s the whole point: you’re not sitting in a theater watching a film happen. You’re in it.”

For Spencer, the working relationship with L-Acoustics is as important as the technology itself. “L-Acoustics listens to what I’m doing and helps my team develop faster ways to work,” he says. “What we’re doing is genuinely complicated and having that support makes it possible to push the creativity further during previews rather than just keeping up with it.”