“We need a world-class install. Oh, and you only have 18 months. Is that a problem?”
When the phone rings at IPR Services, the company’s Owner Bob Patrick expects to hear a challenge. After all, IPR has been at the helm for some of the most interesting install projects across the globe, including The Mirage in Las Vegas, Staples Center in Los Angeles and Makkah Mosque in Saudi Arabia. Still, he wasn’t quite prepared when he heard that he only had 18 months to get the design and install done for the brand new 7,100-seat Nokia Theatre L.A. Live in Los Angeles.
Patrick and the IPR team got to work shortly after the theatre was constructed and Designer Chips Davis buffed out the room’s acoustics. Eighteen months. Ready, set, go.
Beyond the project’s timeframe, Patrick was challenged by the integration of a number of disciplines that included the sound system, video system, security, telephone, data, broadcast cabling and RF distribution.
The theatre opened in October 2007 with a six-day run featuring the Eagles and the Dixie Chicks. After that blockbuster run, musical acts like Sugarland, Queens of the Stone Age, Neil Young, Anita Baker, Mary J. Blige and John Fogerty have hit the stage.
The room’s technology was maximized when a pair of awards shows — the American Music Awards and performances broadcast during the Grammy Awards — were also staged and broadcast from there. It will be further tested when the Primetime Emmy Awards begin to telecast from the theatre this fall.
Keep It Flexible
Designing a system that was flexible for all of those events was important, Patrick reports, and so was making sure the PA was rider-friendly. To that end, IPR called for a system that includes Crown amplifiers, two stripes of JBL 4889s in a line array and a pair of Soundcraft Vi6 consoles. “The ability to have a well-respected and acceptable in-house system was a major criteria,” Patrick states.
While the 4889s cover the majority of the room, a center hang that includes two arrays of nine JBL 4880A subs and three JBL 4889s down fill boxes. The use of subwoofers in the center hang, Patrick says, “turned out to be quite beneficial. Each center array has three rear facing subs and eight forward facing subs that have been timed and tuned to produce a cardioid coverage pattern resulting in more than 18 dB reduction on the stage. That was very significant.”
Additional boxes — two 4889 three-ways and eight 4880A subs on each side of the stage, PD5212/95 in the upper balcony and AC2212/00 that were hung under the balcony — ensure even coverage throughout the theatre.
When it came to picking a monitor system, IPR went with a Clair Bros. rig that includes 12AM and ML18s powered by Crown amps. While the technology is there for bands to use personal monitors, there is not a permanent package installed at the theatre.
The Soundcraft boards were picked for a couple of different reasons. “The Vi6, especially with Vistonics, is very easy to learn if you’re not familiar with it,” he says, “and the performance is on par with any of the best consoles. It’s basically a Studer console in disguise.”
According to the Nokia Theatre’s Head Sound and Video Engineer Keith Evans, the Vi6 board is becoming more interesting to bands coming into the venue, although most are still bringing in their own board. “The board is very intuitive and it’s great,” he says, “but when you’re dealing with a lot of tours coming in for a one-off, [they] tend to use what they know. It’s not a time to experiment.”
That said, Evans says that most acts will hook into the venues racks and stacks. “But they’ll bring in their own outboard gear,” he adds. “We are working to get the bands to use our infrastructure. That’s the biggest obstacle, but if people have time to set up then it’s a little easier.”
Making Connections
Outside of the musical and talking head events that are booked into the theatre, a handful of televised events will be taking place there, and the board’s ability to send 56 channels of MADI was crucial for those dates. In fact, because of the facility’s broadcast future, the design team also included an extensive broadcast cabling system with somewhere around 30 media panels throughout the facility and a broadcast patch room stage right. Each of the media panels, Patrick says, has high definition SMPTE connectors, Triax connectors, BNC coax connectors, audio connectors, single mode and multi-mode fiber connections, telephone connections, Ethernet connections and power.
The panels serve a number of functions — as tie-lines to the patch room, as tie-lines between panels or as a tie-line to broadcast trucks parked either in the loading dock or in the upper deck of a nearby parking lot.
“We used the same approach at Staples and what it allows us to do is provide a clean installation where broadcasting can come in and connect directly to the building and basically not ruin the building in terms of the temporary cabling that occurs,” Patrick explains. “The real purpose of the inter-tie system is to have the ability to transport different disciplines, be it sound, lighting, broadcast, video or security to these various locations throughout the building.”
The selection of the board also helped simplify the system because most of the processing was built in, Patrick reports. “We used BSS processing for routing and then Lake processing for driving the arrays and Crown amplifiers.
Of course, the mark of any successful installation is a combination of satisfied audiences and recognition from industry pros. The Nokia Theatre L.A. Live got just that during the 19th Annual Pollstar Concert Industry Awards when it was named Theatre of the Year for 2007.
Looks like 18 months was just enough time.
