Tampa-based ESI Productions, which for 25 years has provided concert sound reinforcement systems and services for festivals, tours and corporate productions throughout the southeastern U.S. and beyond, recently took delivery of the first L-Acoustics K3 system shipped to the U.S.
On the day after Christmas in 2013, ESI was also the first sound reinforcement provider in North America to take delivery of an L-Acoustics K2 system, which immediately went out on “The Gift,” a local EDM festival featuring deadmau5 as its headlining act .
“I found out about K3 from an L-Acoustics pop-up on my Facebook timeline on the day it was announced and I immediately knew it would be a part of our inventory,” says ESI Productions President Erick “Otto” Celeiro. “K3’s perfect placement between Kara and K2 is a huge opportunity for us to have the right tool for those events where K2 might be overkill but Kara would require a flown subwoofer to match bandwidth. Its full-range performance from a compact form factor is extremely appealing and I foresee K3 fitting into many aspects of our wheelhouse, from corporate events to large club shows to festival side stages.
ESI Productions crew members with a few of the company’s new L-Acoustics K3 enclosures (left to right): Ozzy Giron, Larry Robinson, Brian Dormer, Erick “Otto” Celeiro, George Tzouanopoulos, Jaret Norman, Pat Clarke and Scott Boculac. Photo Credit: Michael LaCroix.
“I fully expect that we’ll also pair our K3 as out fills to K2 main hangs, plus use Kara as down fills on both K2 and K3 arrays — there’s a lot of versatility there,” he continues. “But I imagine that our K3 will predominantly be used as a standalone system as they have a really smart bumper to stack them on KS28 subs, which will be quite handy.”
Celeiro attributes the main factor for being the country’s earliest adopter of K3 to his “complete confidence in L-Acoustics,” he concludes. “K2 has absolutely taken ESI to new levels. I am not aware of any rock, EDM, country or other production we’ve done over the past seven years where an engineer or production manager has bucked on using K2. The L-Acoustics ‘sound’ is respected and appreciated everywhere and it’s made our jobs far easier. L-Acoustics has been our number one vendor partner since adding K2, which was the best investment we ever made, and K3 is certainly right up there as well.”
