L-ISA technology backs Bone Iver live in LA
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To celebrate the anniversary of this milestone release, frontman Justin Vernon and his band brought the album to life in its entirety, plus additional material, with a pair of immersive live shows dubbed Sincerely Grateful at the new YouTube Theatre at Hollywood Park, Los Angeles, using L-ISA technology.
The two-day event marked the first concerts that the group had performed in more than a year and a half, and also represented the first official worldwide deployment of the new L-Acoustics L-ISA Processor II. Using this 3D audio processing engine, FOH engineer Xandy Whitesel mixed two shows that garnered praise from both patrons and press alike for their ultra-high-resolution, panoramic sound.
“My goal with this band is always to enhance the music and connect with the audience, not distract them with the sound,” Whitesel shares. “When it comes to immersive audio, there’s a fine line between glitz and gold, but the intimacy that L-ISA can bring to even a big venue like the YouTube Theatre is amazing. I equate it to what it must have been like going from listening to mono recordings in the ’50s to first hearing stereo in the ’60s. Suddenly there's a whole new world out there, and it’s much more sonically interesting and engaging.”
He adds that the L-Acoustics immersive audio platform allows him to “more easily make my mix sound huge and beautiful, and I can use spatial panning in ways that I'd previously feel guilty for,” he says. “That can radically change how one mixes because normally we make so many choices and compromises based on building a clean and big-sounding ‘mono-ish’ left-right mix. With L-ISA, the mix from my FOH position translates consistently to almost the entire venue - not just to a narrow strip of audience standing in the middle of the room.”
Although it would be easy to assume that transitioning a 6,000-seat venue’s fixed stereo loudspeaker system into a 7.1 L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal spatial audio design might require a significant investment in additional gear and time, these two shows quickly disproved that.
YouTube Theatre’s stage PA primarily features 57 L-Acoustics K2 and 30 Kara II enclosures that make up the LCR main arrays and out-fill hangs. For Bon Iver’s shows, local certified provider 3G Productions brought in only 11 more K2, plus two dozen extra Kara II for the panoramic system’s Extension arrays. Furthermore, the switchover time to lower, reconfigure, and re-fly the entire loudspeaker system to match the L-ISA design required only five hours from start to finish.
For these shows, five Scene arrays spread out and flown over the width of the stage, all featured ten K2 over four Kara II down-fills, paired with far left and right Extension arrays, both composed of a dozen Kara II. Nine K2 over six Kara II per side served as out-fill hangs, while six Kara II per side functioned as over-balcony out-fills.
Two arrays of eight KS28 subwoofers each were hung behind the centre array in a cardioid configuration, with a further 12 KS28 positioned on the floor across the full arc of the stage. A dozen Kiva II spread out across the stage lip delivered spatial front-fill for the first several rows of seating. LA12X amplified controllers fully powered the entire system, which was driven by an L-ISA Processor II and three P1 digital audio processors, all on redundant Milan-AVB networking.
