The Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center sits on the shoreline of Lake Monona and serves as a community location for both residents and visitors to gather, celebrate and learn.
The venue recently added a new house sound reinforcement system built around loudspeakers from RCF.
The multilevel structure features public promenades, a 40,000 square foot exhibit hall, 14,000 square foot divisible ballroom, 310 seat auditorium lecture hall and 20 meeting rooms of various sizes.
With the variety of functions held on property, the audio-visual team started looking for a solution for their sound system requirements. With the facility including an “AV exclusive” clause in their contracts, it was always the responsibility of the Terrace team to provide the proper audio for the event.
While they had some gear on property, many events called for them to have to outsource equipment, adding a financial burden to both the venue and usually causing an increase in facility rental costs to their customers.
Searching for a solution, they had heard from other venue operators about the flexibility as well as the price/performance ratio of RCF.
“We looked at the flexibility and price point of the system,” notes Terrace AV technician Schuyler Cleven. With RCF bringing in a system for a performance demonstration, “once we heard we knew this was the quality of the boxes that we needed.” And once they evaluated the cost, “they were a third of the cost of other systems considered.”
The system is comprised of 20 HDL20-A, a dual 10-inch 2-way active line array cabinet, along with four SUB8006-AS dual 18-inch active subwoofers.
Aside from performance, a key to the system is the scalability. “The ease and ability to break up the system into different configurations makes our utilization ideal,” says Cleven. “We wanted a system that would be flexible enough to shrink down for smaller meetings and corporate events, yet be able to provide full concert sound for our summer concert series.”
With the accessories provided, the system allows for either flying or ground stacking, or even speaker pole mounting the line array cabinets; with the subwoofers being able to be rolled around the facility for easy placement.
“The system is designed for ease of set up, reducing our labor costs and improving the time management of our personnel,” notes Cleven.
A dividend of the system to the Terrace is that it adds an additional revenue stream. By not having to outsource systems for events provides an incremental increase in profitability.
The summer concert series on the rooftop gardens brings thousands for free Thursday night concerts.
