We do the sound for Johns’ Boys, who are probably the largest male voice choir in the UK right now. They were on Britain’s Got Talent a few years ago, and these days they sell out everywhere they go: York Minster, Chester Cathedral, St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, the Wexford Opera House, theatres in London, Edinburgh, Salisbury.
Those are some of the most beautiful and most difficult rooms in the country to put sound into. So when people ask what live choral AV actually involves, the honest answer is that it is one of the more demanding things we do. Here is why.
A choir is not a band
A choir presents a completely different problem from a rock band. You are not reinforcing a handful of instruments, you are capturing a large group of voices and making them clear and natural for an entire audience, without the result sounding harsh or artificial.
Done well, the audience should barely notice the sound system at all. They should just hear the choir, full and balanced, whether they are in the front row or right at the back. Getting there takes a careful, restrained approach, because the moment a choir sounds processed, you have lost what makes it special.
The building is part of the instrument
Here is the thing that makes cathedrals and minsters so hard: they are extraordinarily reverberant. The room itself is part of the sound, and it does not always cooperate.
In a space like that, the natural echo that makes a choir sound glorious is the same echo that can turn the words to mush if you over-amplify. The skill is working with the acoustics rather than fighting them, placing and mixing so the clarity holds without killing the atmosphere the building gives you for free. Every venue behaves differently, so you read the room and adjust.
The practical challenges nobody sees
Beyond the mix, these venues come with real practical constraints, and you respect them or you do not get invited back.
Access time is usually very tight, so load-in and load-out have to be planned to the minute. You cannot tape cables to the floor in a historic building, so you use cable mats instead. There are restrictions on where equipment can go, and strict rules about what you can and cannot do to the fabric of the building. None of this is negotiable, and a company that turns up not knowing it causes problems immediately.
For more on this side of the work, we have written separately about working events in churches and cathedrals.
Why these relationships last
The choirs we work with tend to stay with us for years. Johns’ Boys are one. Belle Voci, who appeared on The Voice, are another, and they feel like family, they come to us and go nowhere else.
There is a practical reason behind the warmth. A choir that sounds right one night and wrong the next has a problem, and consistency across very different venues is hard to achieve unless the same people travel with them and know the choir’s sound. When a choir trusts a company to get it right in York Minster one week and a Dublin cathedral the next, that trust is worth holding onto on both sides.
That is the part of live choral AV that does not show up in a kit list. It is knowing the choir, knowing the rooms, and being the steady hand that makes a sold-out cathedral sound effortless.
Frequently asked questions
What does live choral sound engineering involve?
Capturing and reinforcing a choir in spaces that are often highly reverberant, like cathedrals and minsters, making a large choir clear and natural for the whole audience without losing the character of the room.
Why are cathedrals difficult for live sound?
They are extremely reverberant, access time is tight, and there are strict rules on the building. You cannot tape cables down, so you use cable mats, and equipment placement is often restricted.
Do you provide sound for choirs across the UK?
Yes, at venues including York Minster, Chester Cathedral, St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, and the Wexford Opera House.
Why does the same sound company travel with a choir?
For consistency. A company that knows the choir brings the same sound from venue to venue, which is why our choral relationships tend to be long-term.
Planning sound for a choir or concert in North Wales?
We provide live event production and live sound for choirs and concerts across the UK and beyond, including some of the country’s most demanding cathedral and theatre spaces.
Get in touch and we will talk through what your performance needs.
Darren Hughes is Director of Pivotal Sound & Lighting, a live event production and AV company based in Llay, Wrexham, North Wales. PSL provides live sound for choirs including Johns’ Boys and Belle Voci, at venues across the UK and beyond.