San Diego, CA (March 5, 2019)—While San Diego’s Music Box opened in 2015, the venue recently decided to revamp its audio system to better serve both visiting acts like Switchfoot, Halsey and Snoop Dogg, and its growing private event business that has hosted Lamborghini, Qualcomm, Sony and others.
Part of that new installation included a VUE Audiotechink solution based around the al-8 line array system and hs-221 ACM subwoofers. General Manager, Joe Rinaldi, the venue’s owners and Deforest Tech Solutions worked together to come to the decision. One of the key considerations was the fact that the venue is three stories tall, coming in at 13,000 square feet and a capacity of 705.
“With the split room and all the reflective surfaces, we knew that coverage was going to be tricky,” said VUE’s Technical Sales Manager, Greg Kirkland. “To make it even more challenging, a weight restriction limited the number of elements we could fly above the stage. We eventually came up with a creative way to split the arrays between flown and stage-stacked components. We used an EASE model to verify and tweak our design before proceeding to installation.”
The system’s split configuration has three al-8 elements flown from either side of the stage covering the top 3rd-level listening area. An additional four elements are installed atop a pair of custom shelves placed five feet above stage level directly beneath the flown arrays. The stacked elements deliver coverage for both the main and mid-level listening areas. Low frequency comes courtesy of four hs-221 ACM subwoofers that are positioned across the front of the stage.
Elsewhere, VUE h-5 dual 5-inch systems are deployed as front and balcony fill, while a single h-208 dual 8-inch low profile system is ceiling mounted for delay fill at the entrance lobby and bar area.
Power and processing for the al-8 line array come by way of four rack-mount VUEDrive V6D Series Systems Engines. The h-5 fill speaker and the h-208 were ordered without the standard onboard VUEDrive electronics to ease weight and infrastructure concerns. Instead, rack-mount V4D Systems Engines provide all power and DSP for the two-ancillary h-Class systems.
The system came online in December 2018, and after just two months of operation, Rinaldi and team couldn’t be more pleased with their decision. “Coverage is perfect, and the sound quality is absolutely amazing,” concluded Rinaldi. “We have had a lot of great successes over the years with different name brand systems at many different clubs, so when we say we love our new VUE system, it really comes from the perspective of having heard it all.”
VUE Audiotechnik • www.vueaudio.com
