Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert! is an upcoming live television special, scheduled to broadcast on NBC on April 1, 2018 on Easter Sunday, and Acoustic Sciences Corporation will be helping with the live sound, right on stage! The reason they contacted us was to help with the drum sets that will be live on the stage during this broadcast. The problem they were dealing with was the drums, specifically the bass drums, were generating too many low sounds across the stage and affecting the other live microphones. ASC & Jesus Christ Superstar were about to team up!
After some consulting with the stage director, we decided that one of our floating drum platforms would be the best solution to get the drums up off the floor. The reason for wanting to get the drums up off the floor is to minimize what you call secondary pickup. If you don’t get the drums off the floor, the low sounds—from the kick drum and toms and so on—will couple to the floor and they’ll spread, and end up having a huge impact with the other microphones on the stage. So by building a heavy-duty drum platform eight-feet-square and about 8 inches off the floor—heavily braced and with the surface not painted or varnished in any way, so that it’s porous and there’s a little bit of sonic absorbency to that—really did the job!
This drum platform uses Acoustic Sciences IsoDeck technology, a non-rubber based solution for deck isolation. While rubber has long been regarded as an excellent isolator, it’s density under load actually transmits sound. We engineered our IsoDeck with technical woven, high density felt, the only isolator that won’t transmit sound. Plus, we don’t stop with just floating the deck on felt…we add WallDamp, a visco-elastic dampening material that stops vibration cold! What you get with the ASC IsoDeck is superior isolation plus vibrational dampening
These are the same type of drum platforms that ASC built for the legendary Bruce Swedien for his recordings of Michael Jackson to help capture the sound of his dancing, using the drum platform and reflecting those dancing sounds back to the microphone.
How It Works
The natural process of sound vibration creates friction and unwanted energy buildup through the bending and slipping of adjacent surfaces. This, in turn, causes the floor to add unwanted acoustic coloration to your room. The IsoDeck isolates the floor, using a unique high density 1” felt strip called a slot loaded spring, inserted into the bottom of every joist to float the deck. The felt is lightly glued into a 3/4” x 3/16” rabbeted groove.
The top of each joist is covered with strips of damping polymer called WallDamp. Two layers of subfloor rest on the joists, separated by squares of WallDamp. With this system, even high power sub-bass energy is isolated and rapidly dissipated. You get real sound isolation, reduced floor resonance, and damping even when there’s thunderous sound.
So, if you do happen to watch this live performance and think to yourself; “man, that sure does sound good!”, well, we would like to take credit for some of that!
