An intimate room gets the star treatment.
Jeff Thompson has what they call in the business a conversation stopper. He’s used it a couple of times now while working with tour managers who are advancing a show at the Ovation Lounge in the Green Valley Ranch Resort in Las Vegas, where he serves as the entertainment production manager. “They’ll ask me what kind of boxes we have, and I tell them L-ACOUSTICS KUDOS,” he said. “Then they ask about monitors, and I tell them that we have L-ACOUSTICS 115XT HiQs. Then we get to desks, and when I say Midas XL8s, everybody pauses and asks ‘What do you mean, XL8s?’ And I say, ‘At front of house and monitors I have XL8s.’”
Always throws them for a loop.
Green Valley Ranch is one of Las Vegas’ high-end hotel properties, so when it came time to build a showroom, parent company Station Casinos knew it had to aim high. In terms of a gear wish list, Thompson had two lists in mind. The first included Heritage consoles and a regular touring package, including an L-ACOUSTICS speaker package. The second, and the one that was ultimately approved, featured a full digital package from amps to processing to cabling to desk.
In fact, the current gear list in the Ovation Lounge includes 20 L-ACOUSTICS KUDO boxes placed in a left-center-right discrete setup and five JBL CSP82 subwoofers with four L-ACOUSTICS MTD108a front fills. According to room designer Scott Oosthuizen, CEO of the AVDB Group, the power of the XL8 made it possible to put up the discrete spread: “That’s very unusual for a showroom, but because of the capability of the XL8 with the SIA Soft stereo manipulation software, a sound engineer has the capability to spread the audio through the left-center-right channels in a very discrete manner.”
In the room, 10 Crown I-T4000s and 10 I-T6000s power the P.A. Three I-T8000s power the subs, and the front fills are powered by an I-T4000. A pair of XTA DP448s provides processing; additional outboard gear includes two Manley MSLC limiter/compressors and an Eventide DSP 4000 B harmonizer. The monitor system is the L-ACOUSTICS 115 XT HiQs, powered by 13 I-T4000s, along with a pair of L-ACOUSTICS dV-SUBs, powered by an I-T6000.
For Oosthuizen, it was crucial to stay digital all through the chain. “In this instance, my preamps on the stage are digitized to signal over to the console on AES50 lines,” he explained. “From the console, it goes digital AES/EBU into the XTA processors, then out of the processors back through the Midas system, back to the stage into the break-out boxes and then AES/EBU straight into the amplifiers. So, we don’t have any analog conversions whatsoever in the whole signal stream.”
The room is also a multimedia wonderland, incorporating a Stewart AB ElectriScreen with a Greyhawk LS 9-foot by 6-foot screen, plus a pair of Stewart 81-inch by 144-inch ElectriScreens and a handful of HD monitors that show images shot through a trio of JVC GY-HD250U HD cameras. The high-end lighting system, which was installed by Four Wall of Las Vegas, has 63 moving heads and a collection of High End Systems DL.2s.
“From the beginning we went with the attitude that we didn’t want any compromise in the room,” Thompson stated. “We wanted to overbuild it. It’s hard to book a 500-seat room for some of the acts the club wants to put in there because artists don’t want to play the smaller spots. So, we went with the idea that it’s a no-compromise room when it comes to audio, video and lighting.”
Oosthuizen also heard the no-compromise mantra when he got the initial assignment. “They wanted to have a room that could compete with, if not annihilate, any other room on The Strip right now,” he said. “They certainly succeeded. This system can take your head off. Overall, it’s a very high-horsepower system, and they spent the money that should be spent on a room like this — which for an A/V integrator like us is a chance in a million. You don’t often have a client who says, ‘How much? OK. Put it in.’”
Making sure that the right gear for the space was purchased was certainly key, but so was the acoustical attention to detail, especially important since the club is located in a large baseball-diamond-shaped room on the second floor of a tin-ceiling casino. For help, Thompson and the team at Station Casinos turned to renowned acoustic engineer Chip Davis, and he completely revamped the room’s sound with treatments on the ceiling, the back wall and the exterior of the building.
“It took a lot of the bounce of the room, but for a 500-seat room it’s either control with the size of boxes, or you are out of control — so we went for the control side of it,” said Thompson. “The Ovation is on the second level of the casino; therefore, the ceiling had to be put on spring isolators because of the subs on the deck, and the stage had to be heavily treated. I couldn’t pour solid concrete like I would prefer; it’s actually a boxed room system. We’ve got quite a bit of acoustical treatment in the room, which makes it easier for us when we’re trying to get a touring band with a lot of guitar amps up.”
For Oosthuizen, one of the other challenges was the room’s low ceiling, which led him to use the KUDO line of speakers. “We needed a speaker system that was going to be able to cover the space and tuck away high enough in the ceiling so it didn’t block the video projection screens, the spotlights and focusing and lighting instruments,” he said. “To get a low profile system, we were going to take the KUDO boxes and deploy them in a horizontal fashion. It wasn’t the typical way, because each box has a nominal dispersion of 10 degrees, and then depending on where you put the louvers, you can aim the audio anywhere.”
To handle the installation, rigging and integration, Oosthuizen turned to Jason Schwartzel and Kevin Page of Audio Video Business Resources. All the AV System AutoCAD engineering and soundvision modeling was done by Nathaniel Hall.
Thompson reports that, to date, acts as varied as pop star Mandy Moore, country act Matt Kearney, swing band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and rockers Collective Soul have played the Ovation Lounge. In August and September, Stanley Clarke, Raul Malo, Jack Ingram and Everclear will be putting the room through its paces.
Thompson added with a laugh that those aren’t the only people coming to see what’s happening at Ovation. “Everybody in town wants to come over here and play with the consoles,” he says. “We were like the testing ground for the XL8s, and now the word has gotten out.”
GEAR
FOH
2 Midas XL8s
20 L-ACOUSTICS Kudos
5 JBL CSP82 Subwoofer
4 L-ACOUSTICS MTD108a
1 HP HP ProCurve Switch 2524
1 HP HP ProCurve Switch 2650
2 XTA DP448 4 X 8
10 Crown IT4000 2000W Amps
10 Crown IT6000 3000W Amps
3 Crown IT8000 4000W Amps
1 Crown IT4000 2000W Amp
2 Midas DL451 XL8 Modular I/O Box
1 Midas DN9331 Klark Teknik RAPIDE
2 Earthworks M30 HDM Omni – 5Hz to 30kHz +1/-3dB
2 JanAl Custom 26 Space Single Wide Rack
2 Motion Labs 1100-2-CC-D8 Racpac 2 space
1 Tascam CD-01U Pro Pro 1-Rack CD Player
1 Tascam CD-RW901 Professional CD Recorder
2 Manley MSLC Manley Stereo Variable Mu Limiter/Compressor
1 Eventide DSP 4000 B Harmonizer
1 Dell Precision M65
1 SIA Soft 0002416 SmaartLive Full Pack
1 SIA USBPre 0002428 USB Pre-amp
MON
1 Midas XL8/5-bay/CC 5-Bay Control Center
4 Midas DL431 XL8 Input Splitter Box
6 Midas DL451 XL8 Modular I/O Box
4 Midas DL461 XL8 Signal Routers
20 Midas DL471 XL8 DSP Signal Processor Units
2 Midas DN9331 Klark Teknik RAPIDE
1 JanAl Custom 24 Space Double Rack
1 Motion Labs 1100-2-CC-D8
1 Dell Precision M65
1 SIA Soft 0002416 SmaartLive Full Pack
1 SIA USBPre 0002428 USB Pre-amp
1 HP HP ProCurve Switch 2524 – Switch – 24 port(s) – 10Base-T
13 Crown IT4000 2000W Amps
1 Crown IT6000 3000W Amp
14 L-ACOUSTICS 115XT HiQs
2 L-ACOUSTICS DV-Subs
1 Sennheiser AC-3000 Active Broadband Antennae Combiner
1 Sennheiser A5000-CP Passive UHF Antennae
2 Sennheiser SR3256-U Dual Rackmount Transmitter
4 Sennheiser E3253-U Bodypack receivers
1 AKG C414B/XLS-ST
4 AKG C-451 Condenser Microphones
2 AKG C3000B
1 AKG D112
1 Barcus Berry Piano Pick-up
6 Country Man Type 85 DI Active
4 Countryman E60W7TSL Headset Mics for Shure Transmitters
6 Klark Teknik DN100 Active DI Boxes
4 Sennheiser e609s
4 Sennheiser MD421 II Microphones
2 Sennheiser MD441-U
2 Sennheiser MKE2-5-K
2 Shure BETA 52A Microphones
6 Shure BETA 57A Microphones
1 2 Shure BETA 58A u
1 Shure BETA91
2 Shure KSM32/CG
6 Shure SM 57
4 Shure SM81-LC
