HAMILTON Tour Debuts PK Sound's Gravity 30 Subwoofer

Tony Award-nominated Broadway sound designer Nevin Steinberg selected PK Sound's Gravity 30 subwoofer for the touring production of HAMILTON, making the musical's U.S. national tour the debut deployment of PK's tour-ready low-frequency system.

HAMILTON is not a typical theatre brief. The show generates an amount of low-frequency information closer to a concert than a musical – cannon fire, deep dance-floor sweeps, drum-machine kick – and it has to reproduce all of it in rooms that were never designed to carry it, a different one every few weeks.

“HAMILTON produces an atypical amount of low-frequency information. The Gravity 30 is capable of delivering everything cleanly and effortlessly, from the transients down through the extreme low-end treats.”

— Nevin Steinberg, sound designer

The constraint that shaped the specification was physical rather than acoustic. Touring theatre offers almost no room for subwoofers: the space exists in inches, under stages and in wing pockets, and it changes with every venue on the routing.

“On a tour, agility and adaptability are paramount,” Steinberg said. “Subwoofer real estate is very limited, so having a compact and efficient low-frequency delivery system like the Gravity 30 with Powersoft M-Force technology is incredibly helpful.” The package proved complete enough to stand alone: “I like how compact the subs are – and how the package just covers our needs without additional equipment. For the HAMILTON tour I've been able to rely solely on the Gravity 30.”

That combination of size and output rests on Powersoft's M-Force transducer – a patented moving-magnet linear motor structure that replaces the conventional voice coil arrangement, allowing PK to cut the weight and dimensions of the enclosure without surrendering output or transparency across the spectrum.

“We worked very closely with Powersoft over the past 3 years to refine and perfect the Gravity 30. We couldn't have done that without Powersoft – we are exceptionally pleased with the results.”

— Jeremy Bridge, President & CEO, PK Sound

Additional Gravity 30 units were subsequently specified for the West End production, extending a low-frequency package developed for the specific problem of carrying a bass-heavy score into a new theatre, week after week, without asking the score to give anything up.