Dan + Shay back on tour with L-Acoustics K Series
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Presented by AEG Presents, The Arena Tour was in support of the duo’s latest album, Good Things, with PRG supplying all audio, video, and lighting systems from its Nashville location. “This was our first tour with PRG, and as soon as I knew that they’d be our touring partner, I went to our production manager and said, ‘Hey, if we can have it, we’d love to be on an L-Acoustics rig,’” shares Taylor Bray, who has been Dan + Shay’s front-of-house engineer for the past eight years.
“I’ve mixed our artists on a lot of different systems, but some of the best shows have been on these big festivals with huge L-Acoustics PAs where we’d walk up with no soundcheck - line check only - do the show, and then afterward think, ‘Damn, that felt good!’”
PRG accommodated the rider request and consequently carried a tight single-truck pack of 32 K1, 40 K2, and six Kara enclosures, 18 KS28 subs, and 48 LA12X amplified controllers housed in custom racks. For the shows, main arrays comprised 16 K1 flown over four K2 downs per side, augmented by adjacent out-fill arrays of 16 K2 per side. Ground subs were grouped in threes and vertically strapped to six KS28 chariots in an asymmetrical cardioid configuration, and each sub cluster was topped by a single Kara front-fill enclosure. Two L-Acoustics P1 processors paired with M1 measurement tools provided overall system tuning and processing.
Each night, the artists would open their show out on a plus sign-shaped B stage 60 feet out from downstage, returning there several times throughout the two-hour performance for their quieter, more intimate numbers. With the full band portions of the show being louder, the audio crew point to LA Network Manager’s relatively new Cardioid Extended (Cx) preset library as being a benefit to keeping the full system under control.
“The Cx preset for the KS28 subs really cleaned up everything - not only the stage but the room too,” says Eric Thomas, PRG’s FOH system tech, who first worked with the artists on their Super Bowl LIV Pregame Show two years ago. “It really helped keep the energy in the room and tighten up the low end. It felt like a 100-percent improvement in sub energy.”
“The increased subwoofer directivity and rear SPL cancellation really saved me in my world on stage left,” agrees monitor engineer Austin Brucker. “Also, our tracks operator was three feet behind the full stack of subs, plus our guitar tech tuned acoustic guitars just a few feet from an array, but there were never any complaints from any crew about volume.”
At front of house, Bray reveals another tool he appreciated having perched on his Avid S6L mixing console - a pair of self-powered L-Acoustics 108P used for talkback, cues, and nearfield monitoring. “I used a very multipurpose pair of 108Ps on my bridge and absolutely loved them - I wanted to take them home with me,” he says.
