The ideal installation scenario involves plenty of advance input from the sound system designer to ensure smooth integration of the system into the space. But often that’s not possible, due to a room’s power, lighting, HVAC, or other systems being placed before the sound system is considered.
That’s the situation Donovan Mote of Phoenix, Arizona’s Pro Production Services faced when he got the opportunity to provide a sound system for The Showroom, a 750-seat cabaret-style/ concert venue at Talking Stick Resort and Casino in Scottsdale, AZ.
Casino management pointed to an Electro-Voice-equipped room in Las Vegas as an example of how they wanted the new room to sound, and because the EV line offers a large variety of compatible components, Mote had the flexibility to find the right elements to work within The Showroom’s existing constraints.
“The casino had a clear vision of the caliber at which they expected the room to perform,” Mote explains. “I hadn’t had much experience using EV for installations, but I’d had good experiences with EV in live scenarios, and I had a great relationship with the area rep, Omar Arnold from Quantum Sales.
“When we began designing we had many options, but decided to base the system around EV XLCi127DVX, a three-way, high-output compact line-array element. Since the room would be used for national acts and the client had expectations to be a leader in the entertainment experience, I knew this would be a great choice.”
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The wedge-shaped room is 90 feet deep with a 40-foot ceiling. Mote says that height helped him keep the left and right arrays up and out of the way of sight lines. But the ceiling, unlike the walls, has no acoustic treatment.
“That was one of my main concerns,” he notes. “We chose a line array in part because I wanted to get as much vertical pattern control as I could for the lower frequencies. And also an array was a better fit for the aesthetics of the room.”
Aided by Electro-Voice Line Array Prediction Software (LAPS), Mote and Arnold settled on eight XLCi127DVXs per side.
“The thing that has always impressed me about the XLCs,” Mote says, “is how intelligible they are without being harsh, especially now with EV’s FIR-Drive processing and with the new DVX woofers, which bring the low-end into balance with the mids and highs. They give you high output in a compact package, the coverage pattern is very smooth left to right, and the sound is crisp without being hurtful, even at higher volumes.”
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The end result, Mote says, is that “the system doesn’t have to be as loud because it is so intelligible. At the bar, for instance, which is directly in the pattern of the arrays, the sound is in the forefront of what is going on, but without being so loud that the bartenders can’t hear drink orders. So the quality of the sound has a positive impact, even in unexpected ways.”
Each array was designed as separately powered zones of three, three, and two boxes so that processing could be applied independently to each zone.
“When we hung the arrays,” Mote says, “it turned out that the response was so even that there was no reason to treat any of the zones differently from the others. In fact, when George Georgallis of EV came in to tune and quality control the system, we didn’t have to do much other than some individual delays and some overall system EQ.”
