WPC line arrays reinforce Speaking Rock
- Details
Describing the venue, SRB owner Scott Brown explains: “Speaking Rock is located on a native American reservation and they have live entertainment seven nights a week with outdoor concerts once a month in their parking lots and a large park nearby. It’s the ‘go to’ area for entertainment because people know there’s always something going on there.”
Concerts at Speaking Rock include a wide variety of artists such as Chubby Checker, P.O.D., RATT, Molotov, Buckcherry, Sammy Hagar and more. In terms of the performance venue, Scott explains, “The main room has a kind of large club atmosphere with two storeys and wraparound balconies, a main stage and the floor.”
The sound system comprises five Martin Audio WPC a side - flown alongside the stage with out-fills of four WPC on stage left - since the room is L-shaped. Eight SXH218 subs are ground-stacked on the floor directly under the edge of the stage.
The system is powered with 11 Martin Audio iK42 amps using one box resolution for optimum coverage. “It’s the audio quality that we needed because it’s a very difficult room with concrete floor, adobe walls and lots of reverberation, which the WPC’s cleaned up immediately,” continues Scott. The CDD12s mounted in the balcony are used for extra speech reinforcement in lower volume situations.
In addition, WPMs are positioned on stage for band side-fills along with four SX118s which are used for side-fills or drum fills, depending on the setup. Four CDD12-WRs are mounted above the outdoor bars and the doors leading into the facility.
Asked about his mission for this project, Scott responds, “They wanted to achieve clarity and intelligibility given the challenging acoustics of the room. In fact, once we were testing the system after installation, several of the staff members were walking through and even though they didn't know audio, they were saying ‘Wow, what happened? What changed?’ This system really is a monster difference from what we had before.”
Emmanuel Garcia, production manager and FOH engineer for Speaking Rock, adds: “It’s an awesome PA. The clarity you can get out of it, especially on vocals is where it makes the most obvious difference. We have all kinds of musical artists on stage and the Martin Audio system performs extraordinarily well. You can pretty much get whatever sound you want out of it. It gives us really even coverage and goes way beyond comparisons with previous systems. I love mixing on it.”
(Jim Evans)
