Photo: ESI Productions crewmembers with a few of their new L-Acoustics K3 enclosures (left to right): Ozzy Giron, Larry Robinson, Brian Dormer, Erick “Otto” Celeiro, George Tzouanopoulos, Jaret Norman, Pat Clarke and Scott Boculac (credit: Michael LaCroix)
For 25 years, Tampa-based ESI Productions has provided concert sound reinforcement systems and services for festivals, tours and corporate productions throughout the southeastern US and beyond. On the day after Christmas in 2013, ESI became the first sound reinforcement provider in North America to take delivery of an L-Acoustics K2 system, which immediately went out on “The Gift,” a local EDM festival featuring deadmau5 as its headlining act. Now, seven years later, the production company once again celebrates another “first”—this time, the arrival of the very first L-Acoustics K3 system shipped to the States.
“I found out about K3 from an L-Acoustics pop-up on my Facebook timeline on the day it was announced and I immediately knew it would be a part of our inventory,” recalls ESI Productions President Erick “Otto” Celeiro. “K3’s perfect placement between Kara and K2 is a huge opportunity for us to have the right tool for those events where K2 might be overkill but Kara would require a flown subwoofer to match bandwidth. Its full-range performance from a compact form factor is extremely appealing and I foresee K3 fitting into many aspects of our wheelhouse, from corporate events to large club shows to festival side stages.”
“I fully expect that we’ll also pair our K3 as outfills to K2 main hangs, plus use Kara as downfills on both K2 and K3 arrays—there’s a lot of versatility there,” he continues. “But I imagine that our K3 will predominantly be used as a standalone system as they have a really smart bumper to stack them on KS28 subs, which will be quite handy.”
Celeiro attributes the main factor for being America’s earliest adopter of K3 to his “complete confidence in L-Acoustics,” he says. “K2 has absolutely taken ESI to new levels. I am not aware of any rock, EDM, country or other production we’ve done over the past seven years where an engineer or production manager has bucked on using K2. The L-Acoustics ‘sound’ is respected and appreciated everywhere and it’s made our jobs far easier. L-Acoustics has been our number one vendor partner since adding K2, which was the best investment we ever made, and K3 is certainly right up there as well.”
ESI Productions can be found online at www.esi-productions.com.
