We’re going to Seattle for the Decibel Festival! EAW has agreed to provide two very different PAs for two very different venues at this week-long electronic music conflagration held each year on the last week in September in our other hometown, Seattle, WA, USA.
Last week in September…right, that’s this week! We better pack.
We’ve talked amongst ourselves about working with dB for a couple of years, and this year we found a way to make it work. We’re totally geeked!
Here’s the basics. For headliner Orbital (Thu.) and The Cannabinoids featuring Erykah Badu (Fri.) at the Paramount Theater, we’re partnering with HAS Productions – the first Red Certified™ KF740 provider – to deliver an innovative solution to this notoriously difficult movie palace converted into concert venue.
And in Neumos, typically a rock club, we’re bringing our own Avalon by EAW™ system for the whole shebang –five showcase performances, Wednesday through Sunday. Each showcase features a different style of music, so we’ll get a wide range of opinions on how the system performs.
Dealing with a Movie Palace
Many cities across the US have converted 1930s era movie theaters into performing arts spaces. Architecturally and aesthetically sumptuous though they are, as high-energy music performance spaces, they present a serious challenge.
The architectural genre “movie palace” basically means fan-shaped room with a giant, steeply-raked balcony that sits low over the rear half of the orchestra section. Flown arrays can’t possibly see the back of the orchestra, and a ground stack can’t safely generate the up angle needed to reach the balcony. In either case, slap-back reflections from the balcony face spoil everything.
The best solution is to cover the two parts of the venue separately; a ground-stacked array targeted only on the orchestra and a flown array to cover the balcony. Six KF740s per side on the deck and six KF740s per side in the air plus a dozen SB2001 dual 21-in subs…I guess that’ll cover 3,000 folks FREAKINGOUT to The Cannabinoids.
This is what EAW and HAS will deliver in the Paramount. We’re working on the models Resolution™, and we’ll publish images when they’re available. We also plan to implement the bent cardioid subwoofer array. All amplifier power will come via HAS’s stock of Powersoft K Series amps.
Neumos: Tighten All the Bolts
Neumos is getting every piece of Avalon by EAW gear we can get our hands on. It’s a fairly normal, slightly long, rectangular room, with a main audience area / dance floor of about 30 x 70 feet. We’ll implement a “four corners” design with four CLUB.two systems. We need to augment this with a fifth channel for the surround sounds of Monolake in the opening showcase, and we’ll use a CLUB.three for that. If we feel the coverage sags in the center of the room, we can augment with a CLUB.three per side.
For subs, we’re bringing four SUB.two hybrid systems deployed in a line in front of the DJ stand. That’s eight horn-loaded 12s and four direct-radiating 21s for about 2,100 square feet. I reckon that’ll get the job done.
On the DJ stand, we’ll have monitors as we did at the Delano Hotel’s Winter Music Festival events, using a pair of CLUB.three systems angled up off a pair of subs. Given the global shortage of SUB.two systems, we can’t use those, but we found a blood relative. We’ve sent a pair of LA400 horn-loaded subwoofers, which are directly related to the SUB.two on the father’s side.
Amplifier power will come via Horne Audio’s stock of Lab.gruppen PLM Series amps, each rack hand-wired and personally delivered to Neumos by EAW’s own US Sales Manager/West Kurt Metzler.
With so little time to prepare, we may need to improvise the installation; you never know where you’re going until you’re there!
Check back for updates as the event progresses. We’ll also post to the Facebook. And there’s a Twitter account called Kenton’s 90s Hair that seems to know quite a bit, so check in there as well.
Now, seriously, I need to pack!
