Sphere Sound Kicks Up Its Heels at Radio City Music Hall

Sphere Sound Kicks Up Its Heels at Radio City Music HallUltra-immersive system from the singular Las Vegas venue is also ready for sportsBy Dan Daley, Audio Editor

Wednesday, November 19, 2025 - 7:00 am

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Today New York City's Rockettes, tomorrow the Colorado Rockies?

Sphere Sound, the immersive-plus sound system that is the hallmark of the futuristic Sphere performance venue in Las Vegas, debuted Nov. 10 as a permanent installation at Radio City Music Hall, the iconic Art Deco venue that is headed by James Dolan, who also heads Sphere Entertainment and Madison Square Garden Entertainment. With Dolan as the connective tissue between sports and entertainment, could that sound technology translate to sports venues, live or on the air?

The immersive-plus Sphere Sound system has been installed at New York City's legendary Radio City Music Hall.

Holoplot refers to the technology's original Berlin-based developer, acquired by MSG Ventures in 2024. The technology's next iteration, will drop sometime in 2026, he added, stressing that Sphere Sound has significantly evolved from the original technology: A categorical game changer, it will go into darn near any venue.

Sphere Sound, a division of Sphere Entertainment, retained much of Holoplot's engineering team. But we're also doing [additional] innovation and design ourselves, Dibble noted. We're not outsourcing any of it. This is all us, and we're wrapping it in patents. This new system will be stunning, and it can go anywhere.

As an example, he cited multi-stage music festivals, explaining that the individual stages could be placed closer together because the Sphere Sound's beamforming capability could keep overlapping sound from conflicting even as it enhanced the sonic/spatial experience for each stage's attendees.

Broadcast? Likely Not So MuchAs for adapting the audio technology to broadcast, Dibble was less assertive. I don't know how you'd be able to deliver it in a broadcast signal and still get the same spatialization effect. Wavefield synthesis [one of the system's underpinning foundational technologies, along with beam forming] does apply, but bandwidth is bandwidth, and the speaker is a speaker. He suggested that no consumer-level audio system could effectively reproduce Sphere Sound's effect.

He added that a comparison with Dolby Atmos immersive-sound format, which supports 7.1.4 audio for broadcast as a part of the forthcoming ATSC3 standard, would find Atmos lacking. That is one-eighth of what this system can do, he said confidently.

A Big OpeningThe new Sphere Sound system in Radio City was revealed with the sort of bombast that its owner has become associated with, a 36-piece orchestra rising on a chair wagon from its pit in front of the venue's huge stage as 36 Rockettes danced in tight formation behind it.

When Sphere opened in Las Vegas in September 2023, it was heralded as a new chapter in live sound but one that seemed destined to stay where it was. As in several hotel venues on the Strip, performing artists and shows have established residencies, with U2 as the anchor at the globular 20,000-seat orb. Its dedicated immersive sound system was dubbed Sphere Sound after the Holoplot technology was acquired.

Dolan tried to export the concept to both London and New York City. Both cities looked askance at the idea because of its scale and cost - its implementation in Las Vegas cost $2.3 billion, as much as a new football stadium - as well as the competition to existing facilities it would bring with it.

Dolan - who owns Madison Square Garden and its major-league tenants, the NBA Knicks and the NHL Rangers, as well as MSG Networks and its MSG Network and MSG Sportsnet RSNs - dialed back his ambitions but only slightly. After a kind of proof of concept with a temporary installation at Manhattan's Beacon Theatre in 2022, he moved forward with installing the sound system permanently in Radio City this year, where it will be used by touring artists and shows as well as by Radio City's signature events, such as its annual Christmas Spectacular.

But the sports connection goes deeper. This year, New York Mets owner Steve Cohen increased an existing stake in Sphere Entertainment to 7.3%, up from 5.5% last year.

Sphere Sound arrives as an entity separate from its Las Vegas namesake at a time when several sound systems touting the immersive slogan are starting to compete in the sports-venue space.

Dibble showed a corporate competitive streak. I'll tell you what: imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, he said with a laugh. Everybody's coming out with a Well, we do this too.' But they don't. Actually, all of them have come knocking on our door wanting to play.

Asked for elaboration, he offered instead a Cheshire Cat smile and a wink.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2025/11/19/sphere-sound-kicks-up-its-heels...
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