L-Acoustic flies for Florida’s Frontyard Festival
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Dr. Phillips Centre’s Frontyard Festival in Orlando, presented by AdventHealth, is a good example. The festival features more than 350 live performances, films, and other events, staged daily, on the front lawn of the Dr. Phillips Centre for the Performing Arts, with as many as 2,000 guests seated in distanced private boxes spread across the yard.
To ensure that all productions over the festival’s six-month run would be heard loud and clear, local sound reinforcement provider OPAV has been deploying K2 and Kara loudspeaker systems from L-Acoustics.
The performance area, known as the Mainstage at Seneff Arts Plaza, features left and right hangs of six K2 enclosures, with two KS28 subs ground-stacked under each array, plus four Kiva II positioned across the downstage lip for front-fill. Two large offstage LED walls each feature six Kara per side to cover the 100m-wide audience area, extending back 85m. Processing and control of the entire LA12X-powered system are provided by an L-Acoustics P1 and LA Network Manager.
“We love that K2 is full-range from 20KHz down to 60Hz, which is perfect for many of the Frontyard Festival’s shows that don’t need the ‘boom’ of a sub, like orchestras with cellos and basses, choirs, plays, and movies,” says OPAV CEO Jesse Durlin, whose company has been an L-Acoustics Rental Network agent since 2017. “K2’s response is really smooth from top to bottom, and it provides great low-end coverage for the whole venue from a single source. Then, when guest rock and pop artists come through, we pair the main arrays with a couple of KS28 subs per side for an even more dynamic experience. K2 is really the perfect rider-friendly system for all types of genres.”
OPAV project manager Tyler Higdon appreciates how well the Kara out-fills complement the K2 arrays on the main stage. “In the high- and mid-range, there is no loss of quality or sound signature going from the coverage of the K2 to the Kara,” he says. “Additionally, the K2 low end blends amazingly well with the Kara-covered areas. The system has great throw and enables us to give every seating pod in the house a full-range sound experience without the need for delays."
“Given the broad range of programming, genres presented, and downtown outdoor noise challenges, Frontyard Festival’s system had to be capable of overcoming acoustic obstacles while presenting the highest quality sound to match the experience of our indoor theatre performances,” notes Spencer Tong, Dr. Phillips Centre’s executive vice president of operations. “We host an extremely broad range of performances, including classical, jazz, rock, opera, country, trance fusion, reggae, comedy, films, dance, community arts, folk, and many more art forms. K2 has been remarkable for them all, and has exceeded our expectations.”
With the PA essentially being left in place for six months from early December through May, one of the keys to the system’s success has certainly been using the L-Acoustics AVB processor and measurement platform. "P1 has been one of the biggest assets in our deployment,” confirms Higdon, who has been onsite with OPAV Audio Engineers Justin Avant and Colten Mortensen for much of the Frontyard Festival. “We’re using P1 for main system control, and it has been very helpful in keeping the rig sounding the same every day by compensating for changes in temperature and humidity.”
