L-Acoustics K2 gets Roadrunner up to speed
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Although the 50,000sq.ft space at Allston-Brighton’s Boston Landing development was initially conceived as a Celtics training facility before the team decided to move across the street, The Bowery Presents (TBP) and AEG saw the available space as a suitable location for a 3,500-capacity live music venue.
The concert promoters once again tapped NYC-based integrator See Factor to supply the room with an L-Acoustics K2 loudspeaker system.
Roadrunner is the third Boston-area venue owned and managed by TBP, which also operates Harvard Square’s 525-capacity Sinclair and books the 1,200-capacity Royale in the city’s Theatre District. The $20m Roadrunner features a scalable stage and room design. At its largest, the stage spans 60ft to accommodate full arena-sized touring productions, but its footprint can also be reduced. Therefore a house PA was designed to travel upstage/downstage on trolleys to three different positions to deliver more intimate experiences for smaller-capacity crowds.
“When we finally got in the building and began incorporating all of the production elements, we decided to make a few changes from the original design based on our desire to keep all of our production elements mobile for multiple room setups and artists’ needs,” says Roadrunner technical director of audio Morgan ‘Mo’ Russell, who serves alongside Roadrunner production manager Eric Jenson and A2 Reid Calkin as the primary audio crew for TBP’s new venue.
“All of those considerations led us to deploy main hangs of 12 K2 enclosures per side with six flown KS21 subs in cardioid right behind them for true full-range left and right, and these are all flown on custom-beam trolleys that can travel up to 16 feet out into the house when we shrink the venue based on production needs.”
Roadrunner also has eight A15 Wide enclosures hung as under-balcony-fills and two A15 Wide as over-balcony-fills that “follow left and right accordingly to maintain stunning stereo imaging throughout the venue”, Russell notes. On the sub feed, the venue has 10 KS28 suspended approximately half an inch off the ground, flown from the front stage decking, allowing the club to move the entire ground sub cluster forward as a unit when it builds the stage out to decrease the room size. Furthermore, eight Kara IIi on the downstage-edge riser decks handle front-fill, and these also move forward seamlessly with the ground subs.
Onstage, the venue’s monitoring amenities include 15 available X15 wedges, plus stereo side-fills consisting of two A15i Focus and two KS28 subs per side. LA12X amplified controllers drive most of the house and monitor systems, with a few additional LA4X.
The initial loudspeaker system design was created by TBP/AEG system design engineer Lorne Grabe, working closely with NYC-based audio engineer Alex Kehr and L-Acoustics applications engineer Chris ‘Sully’ Sullivan.
In addition to sporting new DiGiCo Quantum225 consoles at both the front-of-house and monitor mix positions, the venue also features an L-Acoustics P1 processor at FOH paired with five LS10 switches for Milan-AVB conversion, system control, and atmospheric adjustment. The entire PA is run via AVB, which offers a significantly improved high frequency response due to better timing coherence between vertical loudspeaker circuits.
