William Morris Entertainment (WME), a talent and creative services corporation, recently opened a performance space at its 12th Avenue office location in Nashville to better serve its artist roster. The space offers the opportunity for new bands to showcase their talents and established artists to perform new material (both acoustic and electric) for management.
The WME venue was designed to “emulate” a high-rise amphitheater. With a 20-plus-year relationship with William Morris Entertainment, Sound Image (California, Tennessee, Arizona) was brought in to design an audio system for the venue.
The 1,200-square-foot performance area seats approximately 60 with SRO for 200, and the space is built over two floors: the 14th floor hosts the 24- by 20-foot stage, and the transition between the 14th to the 15th floor is used for seating. It can be viewed from the glass atrium on the 15th floor looking directly down to the 14th floor stage.
“Coincidentally, while I was on the telephone with Dave Shadoan (Sound Image CEO and president), the California Yamaha district manager was at the office and suggested we take a look at the NEXO GEO M620 speaker line,” states Everett Lybolt, general manager of the Nashville facility, 24-year Sound Image employee, and veteran engineer. “A GEO M620 demo system was sent to Nashville for evaluation, and after hearing the system, we decided the M620 would be an excellent choice to fulfill the needs of the WME space. We also chose a Yamaha TF5 digital console for its many features, compactness, ease of use, and main level control.”
The main system contains three M620 boxes and one NEXO LS18 subwoofer per side, two NXAmps, and four self-powered Yamaha DSR112 monitors along with the TF console utilized for front of house mixing.
“Considering the building is all concrete, glass and wood, the room sounds pretty awesome,” says Lybolt. “Premier Global installed the lighting system, which, when you look from the outside on the north and the west side of the building, the space looks like a nightclub all lit up.”
A WME staff engineer handles day-to-day operation with technical assistance from Sound Image when required.
