SR/Live Fri, May 09, 2008
Sound Reinforcement/Live Sound | SR News |
KUDO™ Delivers Righteous Sound At Babeville
Summary
BUFFALO, New York—Singer/songwriter Ani DiFranco recently played the opening nights of her hometown’s newest music venue, Asbury Hall, a 1,000-capacity performance space within a 19th century church in downtown Buffalo. The Church facility and Asbury Hall, known collectively as Babeville, are actually the latest DIY project for the folksinger. DiFranco and her partner in Righteous Babe Records, Scot Fisher, saved The Church from demolition, purchasing the historical site from the City of Buffalo, and kicking off a long restoration process back in 2000. Klondike Sound specified and installed the sound system made up primarily of L-ACOUSTICS components, including the KUDO™ line array.
The Church and parish building make up a large complex that DiFranco and Fisher have put to good use – the sanctuary is the performance space, and the attached parish building and basement spaces house Righteous Babe Records’ headquarters, as well as Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center. Klondike Sound owner John “Klon” Koehler got involved in the Asbury Church restoration in January of 2002, being called on to assess the suitability of the sanctuary for live performance and to make recommendations regarding rigging points, electrical power distribution, stage size and access, and to begin designing a sound reinforcement system. “Scot Fisher understood how important it is to the success of a show to accommodate the needs of touring production,” Klon noted“Basically a show starts and ends on the loading dock and if you don’t have a reasonable flow of equipment, building services and accommodation for tour personnel, the show will suffer. The objective here was to provide the best possible production conditions.”
Once the roof-off renovation was completed and the building could be safely occupied, Klon addressed the acoustic challenges. “We wanted to preserve as much of the 19th century aesthetics that this venue had, but bring it to a 21st century level of production quality. Sam Berkow of SIA Acoustics did a great job of specifying acoustical treatment in places where it wouldn’t be noticed and brought down the adverse reflections in the room considerably.”
Jim Kinkella, head of engineering services for L-ACOUSTICS US, used the manufacturer’s SOUNDVISION acoustical modeling software to help visualize the performance of various products in a variety of locations around the room. “We came up with very uniform SPL coverage mapping to achieve the end results,” notes Klon. The system, installed over September 7-8, consists of two five-element KUDO arrays arranged left and right, and powered by eight LA48a amplifiers. The arrays serve most of the main floor and the side balconies. A pair of 112XT coaxial loudspeakers covers the tips of the horseshoe balcony, out of the pattern of the main speakers, and a small cluster of three dV-DOSC enclosures serves just the rear balcony; both are powered by a total of two LA17a amps. The front-fill system consists of four 8XT coaxial speakers, on the front lip of the stage, powered by an LA4 processor/amplifier. Another eight 8XT on custom brackets are installed on the underside of the side balconies, spaced about 15 feet apart down the length of the room, and powered by another LA4. Four 112P self-powered speakers round out the loudspeaker complement and can be used as additional front fills or stage monitors.
Klon noted that Craig Chapman of Buffalo’s RPM Entertainment was the system’s co-installer. “He handled everything upstream of the XTA DP226 and DP224 processors, including the Whirlwind snake system and 24-channel Soundcraft GB8 mixing console. We felt that the front-end components should be handled locally, since there’s so much flexibility needed in this area.”
For more information on Asbury Hall at The Church, visit http://www.thechurchbuffalo.com. Klondike Sound can likewise be found on the Web at http://www.klondikesound.com.