New York City’s Birdland jazz club enhanced by JBL installation

World famous New York City jazz club Birdland has upgraded its in-house audio system with a variety of JBL equipment.

The installation includes six VRX932LAP powered Constant Curvature loudspeakers, a pair of ASB6112 subwoofers, two Control 29AV models and six PRX612M powered portable PA units, which are being used as stage monitors.

“As the engineer at Birdland, the most important thing for me to be able to do is amplify the musicians’ stage performances in the most naturally sounding way so that the system is almost invisible,” said Birdland’s house engineer Richard Bernard. “The legendary musicians who perform at the club almost always have their own very distinct sound and that’s what people want to hear – ‘that sound’.”

The six JBL VRX932LAPs were hung directly above the stage facing the audience – two pointing at the main house downstage; two located stage right towards one side of the room, and the other two situated stage left facing the rear side of the bar. The 29AVs are hung at the far side of the bar, giving total coverage for the room, and both ASB6112 subs can be found downstage on the left and right front corners.

“I’m running the system in mono, and the subwoofers are connected to the spare aux send on the mixing desk, so I’m free to choose which channels I send to the subs,” Bernard continued. “I used to have to mix for the house and the bar would basically get what they would get. That’s no longer a problem as we’ve had many compliments on being able to hear from that side of the room.”

The biggest improvement is the level of clarity, revealed Bernard: “This is a massive help because the response of instruments and vocals is very true and I’m not forced to just keep turning up an instrument in order for people to hear it – once everything is in its own little pocket in the mix, it just sounds great.”

In addition to JBL loudspeakers, Birdland also invested in AKG microphones, dbx processing and Crown amplifiers as part of the audio project.

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