Installed by Poll Sound, L-Acoustics' local certified provider for install, rental and distribution channels, the new systems--which are primarily used for speech reinforcement and musical augmentation--complement an existing dV-DOSC and dV-SUB music reinforcement system provided by the same integration team six years ago.
According to Poll Sound general manager and lead sound system designer Deward Timothy, the most recent install is made up of two parts: an exploded centre cluster for the front lower bowl seating and a delay ring for the rear lower bowl seats.
The front lower bowl system features three arrays of 10 KARAi enclosures fanned out in an LCR arrangement blanketing coverage to the main aisle approximately 100ft back. Low frequencies are supplied by two cardioid sub arrays each consisting of three SB18i hung between the KARAi arrays.
A delay ring consisting of seven arrays of four Kiva modules covers the rear lower bowl seats on the backside of the main aisle. With the far rear corners a considerable distance from the centrecluster, two more four-element KIVA arrays were installed to extend coverage to those areas. Furthermore, two additional arrays were installed over the rostrum area to provide both front-fill and masking of any remaining rear-of-room reflection.
Power and processing for all of the new speaker components are supplied by a combined total of 14 LA8 and LA4 amplified controllers.
Chris Martin, who has served as the FOH mix engineer for the 360-voice Mormon Tabernacle Choir and 110-piece Orchestra for more than a decade, describes how the new exploded centre cluster and delays have improved services and events. "Many of the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are soft-spoken individuals, so our job is a bit like trying to reinforce a whisper, which can be a challenge in a room of this size," Martin notes. "We measured one of our quietest talkers on our previous system last year at 50dB; the gain-before-feedback was next to nothing. With the KARAi, however, we were able to bring him up another 20dB, so the difference has been huge.
"Although we used to get multiple complaints from audience members who couldn't hear, we recently filtered 125,000 people through the Center in one weekend for our General Conference and had zero complaints--not one! That's quite a testament to the new system's clarity and intelligibility. Plus I find that I rarely use any EQ these days. What used to require layers of outboard 31-band EQs--in addition to parametrics on the channel strip for a podium mic--has been narrowed down to just a tiny bit of filtering on our Yamaha PM1d's channel strip."
(Jim Evans)
