San Antonio, TX (July 29, 2021) — SeaWorld San Antonio’s Electric Ocean Concert Series is bringing the likes of Vanilla Ice, Everclear, Little River Band, Josh Abbott, En Vogue, Newsboys, Chris Jansen, Jesse McCartney, .38 Special, Matthew West, Shelly Lares, Air Supply, Blue Oyster Cult and others to play its 3,000-seat Nautilus Amphitheater this summer. LD Systems designed and installed a new L-Acoustics A Series-based loudspeaker system for the venue.
“SeaWorld owns an ARCS WiFo system that was originally flown at our Bayside Stadium in 2018 for the summertime HydroPower Extreme FX Ski Show,” said theatrical services manager Douglas Ferguson. “Since the Nautilus Amphitheater did not have its own dedicated system, we would occasionally bring Bayside’s WiFo rig over as needed for events and shows, but it wasn’t truly sufficient to cover the larger seating area. When planning for our SeaWorld Electric Ocean Concert Series, we knew that we wanted to install a rider-friendly permanent solution at Nautilus that would deliver full venue coverage and eliminate the need to bring in a long-term rental system.”
The Factory Gets To Work in St. Louis
Ferguson contacted LD Systems sales engineer Jordan Pierce on April 19. “Jordan immediately collaborated with Marcus Ross at L-Acoustics, putting a design proposal in my hand within two days that met our tight timeline and budget, and we agreed to terms for the purchase on April 23,” Ferguson recalls. “The install began on May 24, and our first concert was held just five days later.”
The 180° fan-shaped amphitheater’s new system now features a center array comprised of four A15i (three Focus over one Wide) backed by two sub hangs of four KS21 each, while left and right arrays are each made up of three A15i (two Focus over one Wide). Single vertically-oriented A15i flank the subs for additional mains fill, while two vertically-oriented A10i flown outside of the left and right arrays deliver far out-fill coverage. Lastly, two Kiva II are deployed for added front-fill intelligibility, while six LA4X amplified controllers power and process the entire system, which was tuned by LD Systems audio department operations manager Thomas Ruffner.
The venue soft-opened on Memorial Day weekend with eight shows by Garth Brooks-tribute artist Shawn Gerhard, followed by Everclear officially kicking off the 18-show Electric Ocean Concert Series on June 5. All of the acts for the summer concert run are using the new L-Acoustics house rig.
