The High-Stakes Game of Vegas Entertainment Takes on Another Player in the Palms.
Las Vegas suffers from no shortage of performance venues. Throughout its history as a resort destination, performers have made their way to Vegas to play any one of the many hotels and casinos that call Sin City home, but the Palms hotel and casino has upped the ante with the addition of their new venue, The Pearl.
The Pearl seats as many as 2,500 audience members for shows ranging from touring concerts to the Ultimate Fighting Championship. (You have to admit that going from Britney Spears on Friday to UFC on Saturday would be one memorable turnover for the in-house crew.) Seating is on three levels, with seating areas on the ground, in a mezzanine and in the balcony. In the interest of expanding the acts who may find the space useful, however, The Pearl has allowed for smaller expected houses. Where Las Vegas has long been home to mammoth theatres and intimate clubs with little in between, The Pearl’s mezzanine and balcony can be draped off to reduce the capacity from its 2,500 maximum to approximately 1,100 to fill the “mid-size” void. Regardless of capacity, the house doesn’t just plop down in front of the stage like so many other venues. By curving the seating in a near “thrust” arrangement — done in order to accommodate events other than concerts — audience proximity to the stage increases dramatically. Standing in the balcony of most large venues makes you feel like a small clam swallowed by a blue whale, but The Pearl’s stage seems close, verging on intimate. HC Rowe, entertainment director for the Palms hotel and casino, told FOH that part of this might have to do with the fact that the distance from the lip of the stage to the back row of the balcony measures only 120 feet.
“You’re not sitting in a room and looking sideways, like in the arenas,” says Rowe. “Everything’s focused in the right direction.”
Hit the Deck Running I
In terms of audio, the Palms has provided The Pearl with a big package. For control, the facility has turned to Digidesign with a pair of VENUE D-Show consoles for FOH and monitors. The speakers include 40 JBL VerTec VT 4888DPAN powered enclosures, 20 VerTec 4882DP arrayable subwoofers and three groups of four VerTec 4887DPAN powered line array elements for a total of 12. House mics include a complement of Shure and Neumann elements. Sam Berkow from SIA Acoustics designed the acoustics, while Steve Sockey from SIA designed the sound system. Audio Analysts, based out of Colorado Springs, Colo., handled the install.
“In so many ways, it’s the room I’ve always wanted to build,” says Berkow. “The Palms mandated that this room not be just another multipurpose room in Vegas, but that it be a special place for the audience and performers. That’s not something that happens every day. People don’t sit around and say ‘let’s build something really great.’ ”
Berkow listed the things he feels sets this room apart, starting with a lack of background noise.
“They wanted to keep the air conditioning noise relatively quiet,” says Berkow, “so that there wasn’t extra ambient noise in the halls during recording.”
He also made sure the opening to the balcony was extremely high, so people don’t feel as if they’re under a balcony, but are still part of the event, and he placed a bass trap along the entire back of the balcony seating area to cut out the bass build-up that can plague the back wall of a short venue. This kind of thinking went into every aspect of the room.
“Every surface incorporates an acoustical element,” says Berkow. “The architects and I worked together to create a look that achieves the visual appearance they wanted and the acoustical performance I needed.”
Marc Nutter, Audio Analysts’ project manager for it’s work with The Pearl, submitted a bid to SIA for the install last July. Once they were awarded the contract, they wasted no time in getting to work.
“From the very beginning, everyone on board knew it was going to be very fast-track, high-paced and the intended opening was never going to be changed,” says Nutter. “Everything had to be handled very precisely.”
Audio Analysts worked with Bombard Electric for the wire pull, but handled all the rack wiring, termination and commissioning itself. And the end result?
“We’re absolutely thrilled with it,” says Nutter. “You have a combination of a system with great coverage throughout the room with a room that is acoustically very linear as well. At practically every seat in the house, you have a near-identical experience in both frequency response and level.”
What Gets Recorded in Vegas I
But The Pearl’s secret weapon might not be just one great room, but several great rooms. The Pearl offers 400 Amp, three-phase power on the stage deck for extra lighting, and a split from the stage snake goes right into their, in-house recording studio. In short, they’ve made it seamless for creating live recordings.
“We anticipate doing a lot of those,” says Rowe. “You record a live album from here, you can go right up to the studio that night, do any fixing that you need to do, and it’s pretty much done.” Part of that anticipation of recording live shows led to a deal with iTunes to offer videos and songs recorded at The Pearl. Wolfmother and John Legend have already released videos of their performances, and MTV has signed on to present their Video Music Awards there this fall. Suddenly, the potential paying audience for an after-concert CD just got a lot bigger.
And The Pearl hasn’t forgotten the crew, either. For loading in touring rigs, the loading area has been outfitted with a two-truck dock that has direct access to the stage via a freight elevator that’s as wide as a truck and 28-feet deep. As yet another boon for wayward techs in need, The Pearl provides an in-house shop equipped for numerous repair, construction and maintenance projects. With that in mind, this could easily become one of those tour stops the crew actually remembers and looks forward to.
Planning for The Pearl started two years ago, and the development of the space continued right up to opening day. While Palms management and ownership were ready to incorporate a top-flight performance venue into the design of their building, the addition was not without a certain degree of shuffling. For The Pearl to occupy its current location, with direct access from the casino floor level, a movie theatre had to be relocated, as well as the high-limit gaming area. It’s not every day that a casino will mess with their high-limit gaming area to make room for a venue, so if we had any doubts about the Palms’ commitment to this project before, the revelation that high-limit got moved immediately squashed them. Another good gauge of a company’s commitment to such a project is the allotted budget. When asked what the expenditure was on The Pearl, Rowe simply replied, “A lot.”
The Pearl at the Palms presents yet another Las Vegas venue of choice for incoming acts. If HC Rowe’s expectations are met, and The Pearl does indeed book 50 acts between now and November, Las Vegas audiences, whether local or tourist, might find an intimate view to some big shows. While you can never be sure what might happen with ticket prices, Vegas is usually a good bet to get your dollar’s worth.
Rumble in The Pearl
The gear that will keep The Pearl rolling
2 VENUE D-Show Consoles
40 JBL VerTec VT4888DP-AN Speakers
6 JBL VerTec VT4888-AF Speakers
20 JBL VerTec VT4882DP-AN Speakers
24 JBL VerTec VT4887DP-AN Speakers
3 JBL VerTec VT 4887-AF Speakers
18 Crown I-4000 Amps
4 Crown CTS 8200 Amps
16 Audio Analysts VFX12 Stage Monitors
12 Shure SM57 Mics
12 Shure SM58 Mics
4 Shure Beta 57A Mics
4 Shure Beta 91 Mics
2 Shure Beta 52 Mics
6 Shure Beta 98S Mics
6 Shure KSM32/CG Mics
3 Shure UR24D/BET A87A Wireless Mics
6 Neumann KM184/MT Mics
4 Neumann KMS105/MT Mics
8 Sennheiser MD 421 II Mics
