Las Vegas, NV (October 21, 2025)—Bob Marley was a multi-hyphenate—a musician, political activist and more—and it’s only fitting that the theatrical tribute, Bob Marley: Hope Road, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, NV would be created in part by another multi-hyphenate: the show’s sound designer and construction consultant, Jason Pritchard.
The show blends music, dance, live performance, and visuals, using a half-dozen interconnected spaces to take the audience through Marley’s life and time. The show’s presentation changes throughout, so Pritchard and integrator Technology West Group had their work cut out for them.
“I am the sound designer, and I am also the consultant for the construction aspects of the production,” he says. “I put everything on paper so that it could get bid and built and coordinated with electrical and HVAC and space planning and all of those elements.”
That dual role proved essential when the original concept for the show shifted after structural limitations of the former buffet space forced a rethink. “It went from one sound system for me, and one main sound system with a couple little auxiliary elements, to six sound systems in five rooms,” he explains.
The Meyer Sound distributed system supplied by Tech West includes 29 Ultra‑X23 compact point source loudspeakers, 15 Ultra-X40 compact point source loudspeakers, and two Ultra-X20 compact point source loudspeakers, along with two MM-4XP miniature self-powered loudspeaker and five USW-112P compact subwoofers.
“All the live microphones are being handled with an Allen & Heath D-Live console,” he continues. “There’s one D-Live engine and we’ve got a control surface in each room. That allows five front-of-house positions plus iPads.”
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In reggae, the low end carries both the groove and the weight of the message, and the Hope Road system design makes that tangible, with low frequencies reinforced by five 2100‑LFC low-frequency control elements and 15 900-LFC compact low-frequency control elements. “In the first room, Dancehall, the 2100‑LFC is built right into the stage under the DJ platform, so you can stand literally next to it and feel that energy,” Pritchard says. “In the Cathedral room, it’s also sort of right in the audience. You really feel, when they’re doing ‘War,’ for example, like you’re right inside of it.”
One of Pritchard’s most creative integrations is a Volkswagen microbus in the Trenchtown room, outfitted with Meyer Sound speakers. Hidden Ultra-X20 loudspeakers fire through the grille while a USW-210 compact narrow subwoofer sits inside the center console. “The bus has its own P.A., wireless systems, and everything,” he explains. “The Ultra-X20 fires straight forward, and the USW-210 points down into the floor. It needs to blow your socks off—and it does.”
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The entire multiroom system is managed through two Galileo Galaxy 816 network platforms and Meyer Sound’s Nadia integrated digital audio platform. Nadia essentially serves as the show’s backbone, managing playback, routing, and partitioning resources across multiple rooms. “Nadia is doing a bunch of jobs for us,” says Pritchard. “It’s handling the routing for everything. We’re also using Wildtracks for all of the music playback and sound effects in each room…we are able to partition things into resources for Dancehall, Jamming Tree, and Trenchtown to keep cue lists separate and to keep all the players separate. It’s very nice to have a single system we can divide into the pieces that we need.”
