The BlueShore at Cap, as it's known, hosts a wide range of events, from theatrical productions to concert performances by the school's music department and touring artists, including Buffy Saint-Marie, Randy Brecker and Harry Manx. Prior to the system retrofit, the venue's popularity with the community and visiting artists was pushing its basic PA system past its limits, and the school's own ambitions for the space demanded a sound system that could cover all of the artistic territories the theatre, jazz and music departments had staked out.
Today, that mission has been accomplished in the form of a new L-Acoustics system comprised of Kara(i), ARCS WiFo and 8XTi elements, which Solotech's Larry Darling specified with critical input from those who are intimately familiar with the venue's needs.
"We wanted to make sure that the theatre's system would satisfy the needs of both the university's theater and music departments," says Andy Horka, an instructor who teaches sound design at Capilano University as well as serving as the resident sound designer for the Richmond Gateway Theatre and touring sound engineer for past shows like Rent, Riverdance and Annie Get Your Gun. Horka says he first encountered L-Acoustics speakers over 15 years ago in Orlando where he did the sound design for a production of Ben Hur: The Musical. "It was the V-DOSC system at that time, and it was very unconventional to see a touring system in a theatre," he says. "But when I heard it, I fell in love with that sound."
Horka worked with the theatre's production technician, Brian Morrison, and Lawrence Wu, also an instructor at Capilano University's music department and a live sound engineer whose music credits include 12 years as the technical director for the Canadian Rocky Mountain Festival. Together, they designed a system with L-Acoustics and Solotech that could easily accommodate both musical and theatrical productions and keep the school at the leading edge of venue sound.
The result is a system that features seven Kara(i) speakers flown in front of three SB18i subwoofers in a centre array, with eight ARCS WiFo speakers positioned four per side as side-fills. However, Horka points out that the entire system is largely based around the use of five coaxial 8XTi speakers used as front-fills and arrayed across the front of the stage, and just below it, in custom-built soffits. These speakers are precisely aimed and time-aligned to produce imaging that keeps the sonic focus on the stage.
(Jim Evans)
