Tulsa, Okla.—The 2,365-seat Chapman Music Hall, the largest of four venues at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, was recently equipped with an L-Acoustics K3i-based sound system.
The new house sound system features a total of 114 loudspeakers. This includes main arrays of a dozen K3i per side, seven A15i flown as a center array, and four KS28 subs flown behind the center array in a cardioid configuration. A pair of X12 serve as orchestra pit side-fills, with two X15 HiQ as mezzanine corner-fills, and nine X4i as orchestra pit rail front-fills. More A Series enclosures are deployed for over-balcony and orchestra rear surround use, plus 53 X8 coaxials as under-balcony, front stage-lip, and surround-fills in the room, which features continental seating on the main floor and is segmented into orchestra, mezzanine, and balcony levels.
Additionally, an L-Acoustics P1 processor manages the system’s nine LA7.16i and one LA12X amplified controllers, along with a redundant Optocore, Milan-AVB, and Dante digital audio networks for system drive. Signals are mixed via a DiGiCo Quantum338 audio console at the FOH position, which is fitted with an Orange Box and DMI-AVB card, allowing it to communicate directly with the P1.
Designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki, the hall has showcased the likes of Tony Bennett, Norah Jones, Michael Bublé, Kelly Clarkson, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Steve Martin and Itzhak Perlman, as well as touring Broadway musicals, over the past 50-plus years.
The new system design specification was provided by consultancy Schuler Shook and integrated by Brown Note Productions, which adroitly performed the system retrofit with no disruption to the center’s intensive schedule of more than 500 annual events.
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“Despite their compact size, the K3i enclosures offer full-range performance with an extended low end, which meant that we required fewer subwoofer cabinets,” explains Sten Severson, project audio video consultant at Schuler Shook. “We almost didn’t even need to add subs to complement the main arrays, but ultimately chose to specify only four KS28, which definitely gave us a cleaner overall system design. K3i really provides a lot of bang.”
Severson also compliments L-Acoustics technicians for their help in the design proces: “They helped us get the modeling of the hall and of the speakers correct.”
