Frost School of Music adds L-Acoustics A10
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Located within the L. Austin Weeks Centre for Recording and Performance, the intimate 147-seat Victor E. Clarke Recital Hall is a familiar venue to all of the nearly 700 students currently enrolled. Used daily for recitals, concerts, and ensemble performance, the room was designed with variable acoustics by noted acoustician Charles Bonner so that a wide range of music could be performed with optimal listening and recording conditions.
To accommodate the growing interest in electronic music studies and performance, the school called on Unreal-Systems, an L-Acoustics certified provider for installation and rental (CPi/CPr), to install a new A Series loudspeaker system in the hall.
“Normally, a venue of this size would be purely an acoustic space, but the Frost School has been moving toward using Clarke Hall for more contemporary music, including their computer music ensemble, which has a focus on electronic music production,” says Unreal-Systems project manager and lead systems engineer Ross LaBrie. “They required a fairly robust PA option, but also requested that we not have any subs on the ground level, which meant that we needed an arrayable PA with subs over the main enclosures. By modelling our options in L-Acoustics Soundvision, A10 paired with KS21 quickly proved to be the right solution to fit the school’s fidelity, coverage, and budgetary needs.”
The hall’s new loudspeaker system features left and right arrays of two KS21i subs over two A10i Focus and one A10i Wide, all finished and screened in a light RAL custom colour to visually minimise the presence of the hangs. An additional A10i Focus is also hidden in a ceiling cavity between the arrays to deliver centrefill coverage to the middle seats in the first few rows. Onstage, the school has the option to deploy up to six coaxial X12 wedges for monitors, and both the monitor and FOH setups are collectively powered by four LA4X amplified controllers.
“With Clarke Hall being a somewhat narrow space, it was important to keep energy off of the walls, and the adjustable louver feature of A Series was very helpful in achieving that,” shares Unreal-Systems owning partner and head systems tech James Tejada. “By controlling the directivity of the high-frequency elements, we were, in turn, able to push more sound pressure level to the back of the room for a really smooth and cohesive SPL from front to back.”
Dana Salminen, who has served as Frost School’s director of production services for the past five years, says, “I’ve used L-Acoustics rigs on many shows, big and small, for most of my career. It’s always one of my top choices on my riders for its clarity, punch, and detail. If I have an L-Acoustics system on my show, my mind is at ease. So when the time came to put a loudspeaker system into Clarke Hall, I knew that they would be ideal for the job.”
