Based in Vista, California, North Coast's two newest purpose-built venues are North Coast Live and The Edge. The vendor that had originally been retained to design and install sound reinforcement systems for the sites had to pull out of the project only two months before opening day at both facilities. Pyxis got the call from North Coast, and Costanzo went to work with systems engineer Alan DiCato, deciding how to handle the project within the church's allocated budget.
While the previous provider had already specified designs based on products from a different supplier, Pyxis proposed using an Electro-Voice system instead. "EV has become our go-to manufacturer, because the installs we've done with their products have always sounded great right out of the box," Costanzo says. "And we also knew that EV and their local rep, Quantum Sales, would be able to assist us in making these tight timelines and staying within budget. Both factors were crucial, because, with that short of a time-frame, any issues we had would be a big problem for everyone."
Pyxis had the two systems designed, priced, and approved within three weeks. "EV has such a broad line of different boxes that we were able to choose something that fit the application and the price point really well," DiCato says. The core elements of both systems are "exploded array" clusters drawn from Electro-Voice's Xi-series, which brings premium, tour-quality sound to the installation market. While the rooms are physically dissimilar - one is rectangular and the other more trapezoidal, and their ceilings are different heights - the clusters are identical except for the angles of the speakers.
"Line arrays would not have been a good choice for these rooms," DiCato says. "We didn't have the ceiling height we would have needed, and in one of the rooms we had an odd shape to cover. The exploded array design allowed us to angle the boxes in each room to get the coverage we needed, and also to use fewer boxes and fewer amps channels to get that coverage, which allowed us to stay within the customer's budget."
(Jim Evans)
