On the Jam Cruise Roller Coaster of Sound

When you stuff 3,000 music-crazed fans and three dozen bands on a boat (OK, it’s a ship), you’re likely to get a wide range of sonic experiences in a variety of location on board.

Which is precisely what happened again this year on Jam Cruise, floating around the Caribbean on the MSC Divina. Let’s talk about the good, the bad, the mediocre, and the downright awful. Before we get started, you should remind yourself of that riotously funny joke. You know, the one about music too loud and being too… well, something or other. We wanted to write this so that we could keep sound problems (mostly) out of our main review (on its way soon).

The Pool Deck is a massive undertaking, set up so that the maximum number of people in the vicinity can enjoy the music. The intimate Brews at Sea stage at the back of the pool deck is much easier to mix; everything there sounded good. The Pantheon Theater is designed for something close to sonic perfection. The Black & White Lounge is a disco with limited visibility and a lounge in back where many patrons are lounging but not listening.

The Disco Elevators are like real clubbing. The Golden Jazz Lounge is an intimate setting, or it would be if 300 people weren’t trying to squeeze in like sardines. The Atrium is a lovely venue where patrons can, theoretically, hear from the bandset on Deck 5 and up to Decks 6 & 7. The  is lovely, except that again most patrons aren’t there to hear the musicians.

Across all of those stages, sound quality and volume varied wildly, with great sound for some sets and awful sound for others. Let’s take the Pantheon for starters. Medeski, Martin, Porter, Diop & Logic, Jerry Harrison & Adrian Belew & Remain in Light, Lotus, Cory Wong, Everyone Orchestra, and Purple Party all sounded pristine in there. Lettuce, on the other hand, had bass and bass drums (those always seem to be the culprits) so loud you couldn’t hear guitar, horns, or vocals and the entire place vibrating. Cimafunk on Thursday was atrociously mixed: the right-hand conga and drums drown out almost everything else. The Franc Moody set was unlistenable; I’d seen them four times previously with no such issues. Why on earth would sound engineers — whether with the band or with Cloud 9 — do this deliberately?

The Pool Deck is always a challenge. TAUK Moore with The Horn Section, Cimafunk, Steel Pulse, Cool Cool Cool, Chali 2na & Cut Chemist, The New Mastersounds, Galactic, Mike D’s Super Jam, and Lotus all got it right, much better than in previous years. Franc Moody was again unlistenable, and the sailaway Lettuce set was a challenge.

Without a way to limit numbers in the Golden Jazz Lounge, the engineers usually respond by cranking the volume way up. Eddie Roberts & The Lucky Strokes had this problem, and I wasn’t oiled up enough to swizzle into the room for the Cimafunk set. But it can be done right: witness Shira Elias’ great show.

The Black & White Lounge in general seemed to fare much better than in previous years. Chali 2na & Cut Chemist, Isaac Teel & Kanika Moore (and all of TAUK), Magic Beans, and Diggin Dirt all sounded good there. It’s tougher with the jam sessions, of course.

The Atrium sets are deluxe, of course, except that there are so many people on the outskirts talking loudly.

The sound is ALWAYS good at The Spot!

As always, YMMV (your mileage may vary).