Meruelo Studios, the production facility of Meruelo Media in Los Angeles, a portfolio of television and radio stations that includes Power 106, KLOS-FM, 93.5 KDAY and KWHY-22 TV serving a combined audience of nearly four million, has been outfitted with new audio systems utilizing a variety of loudspeakers from dBTechnologies.
The 22,000-square-foot complex, occupying the former home of the GAM Arts Center in Wilshire that once served as a rehearsal hall for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, offers three multipurpose spaces for recording, performance, and broadcast. With two broadcast TV stations and five broadcast radio stations, Meruelo’s productions span everything from talk shows to live performances, in genres ranging from rock and hip-hop to orchestral performances.
“We have a lot of legacies; KLOS is the rock and roll station in Los Angeles; along with Power 106 and hip-hop station KDAY,” explains David Gray, Meruelo Group’s VP of engineering. “We also have KLLI, which is reggaeton; the last show we just did was for a reggaeton band out of Mexico City and 88 Power. We just had the band Dirty Honey in here for a live taping for KLOS, and we also do a network for The Heidi & Frank Morning Show for KLOS,” he adds. “We also run an over-the-top network for Fox; we’re standing up some football programming for them. We run all their network operations; we do their productions for their live show.”
With spaces ranging from green rooms to talk show sets and a 4,000-square-foot performance space, Don “Dish” Bish, co-founder of local tech supplier Trans Am Entertainment, recommended dBTechnologies for the project. “We used dBTechnologies speakers over at the Viper Room, and I really liked them,” says Bish, a veteran live sound engineer and touring drummer. “When this project came up, I needed a little bit more high fidelity because of how great the room is here. It’s such a perfect space; it’ll show off every nuance of every piece of equipment you have.”
“One of the challenges that Dish and I came into was how to handle not just rock and roll, not just hip-hop, but the subtleties of an orchestra,” adds Gray. “How do you cover that whole gamut? dBTechnologies really stepped up and filled in that gap.”
For Bish, VIO C212 arrayable active point-source loudspeakers were the choice: “When I experienced the horn technology, I realized it encompasses such fidelity that I can get great vocal clarity, I can have a great guitar tone, I can have a great violin through it. I can have a great set of chimes from an orchestra and I can also have a great backtrack synth from a hip-hop artist.
“I can shape the sound for the entire room with a laptop, for any genre of music,” he explains of the six-loudspeaker array. “When you tell the DSP inside the speaker what audio curve you want it to do, the boxes actually talk to each other via dBTech’s Aurora Network. I can log directly into a speaker and I can say, today we’re doing hip hop, so I’m going to scoop out a lot of 400 hertz and I’m going to make sure that the inside speakers are more focused than the outside speakers.
Meruelo Studios’ production capabilities extend to smaller, multipurpose spaces, including a green room equipped with a dBTechnologies ES503 portable column PA, which can be moved around and configured in a range of ways.
“Artists can warm up and rehearse in the green room,” says Bish. “They can, say, plug a microphone in, plug an acoustic guitar in. We can also pipe music from the broadcast into the room. We can use it as a giant home theater. That’s the beauty about that PA: It’s extremely portable. If an artist decides they want to rehearse on the roof, one person can take the system up there and set it up for them.”
Studio C, equipped with six dBTechnologies LVX P5 passive loudspeakers and an additional ES503, serves as a hub for meet-and-greets and other events. “We can entertain an entire two studio’s worth of people with catering and everything with the small surround studio speakers,” says Bish.
When it comes to choosing a sound system, fidelity comes first. But Bish and Gray insist that their partnership with dBTechnologies is about so much more than that. “The people at dBTechnologies have just been fantastic to my company over the years,” says Bish. “When you’re dealing with a large company like that, when I can actually call the head of the company on the phone and have a candid conversation with him from another country a half-day away, that speaks volumes. There are a lot of great speakers out there, but I can’t state enough how much the people who run their business make a difference in my choice.”
