The J.E. Broyhill Civic Center features a 1,000-seat theater/ auditorium and conference facility which together host over 600 showcase, community and corporate events each year. Auditorium events include numerous musical, dance and theatrical performances.
Broyhill Civic Center director Jeff Bentley worked with Myron Surber of ONAVS who designed an updated sound system to support the auditorium’s diverse programming based on Fulcrum Acoustic‘s FL283 dual 8-inch subcardioid line array module.
The project presented a number of interesting acoustical challenges.Rear low frequency rejection was crucial for its loudspeakers to keep sound from radiating off of the proscenium and from bleeding onto the stage. Additionally, high-output yet compact speakers were required to provide the requisite SPLs and low frequency output without interfering with the auditorium’s sightlines or aesthetics.
Broyhill Civic Center employed a simple yet flexible sound system based on two flown Fulcrum FL283 eight-module arrays, supported by stacked RCF subwoofers and driven by a Powersoft X8 amplifier platform – all installed by Imagine Design & Production Services.
“The auditorium presented mounting position challenges which could only be solved by speakers with significant low frequency rejection,” Bentley explains. “Fulcrum’s unique passive cardioid approach was a huge selling point as it delivers the cardioid effect we need in half the footprint of an active cardioid array. The flown arrays also cleared sightlines formerly blocked by our ground stack PA.”
Fulcrum FL283’s full-range passive operation at 16 ohms allows up to eight speakers to be driven from a single power amplifier channel and its solid low frequency performance down to 54 Hz minimizes the need for subwoofers.
Bentley claims, “The FL283’s single amp channel operation saved us money and simplified processing, and its surprising low end output supports three quarters of our events without using subwoofers.”
“The FL283 line arrays deliver seamless, full-range coverage throughout the auditorium with all the sound reinforcement and vocal intelligibility our diverse programming requires. We couldn’t be happier with our new sound system.”