Minneapolis, MN (January 10, 2024)—Minneapolis’ First Avenue club may have been immortalized in Prince’s 1985 flick Purple Rain, but that doesn’t mean the venerable venue is still stuck in the Eighties. As if to underline the point, the club recently became the home for North America’s first permanent installation of L-Acoustics’ new flagship line array system, the L Series.
There’s more to First Avenue than merely the Purple One, of course. Having hosted the likes of Green Day, Public Enemy, Ray Charles, Megadeth and Tina Turner over time, while also fostering the hometown indie-rock sounds of The Replacements, Hüsker Dü and Soul Asylum, the venue has kept up with the times in terms of sound equipment—but it was still time for the system to get a major overhaul.
When locally based Allied Productions integrated the L Series system into the club this past fall, it was part of a larger upgrade that included a pair of DiGiCo Quantum225 consoles for front of house and monitororld. The new loudspeaker system officially debuted on a Thanksgiving Eve Show featuring Ike Reilly, followed by a sold-out Atmosphere concert two days later.
“First Avenue finally has the sound system it deserves,” said Randy Hawkins, who mixed the Atmosphere show. “I had the EQ flatter than ever, and I even had the subs and bus compressor turned down -7 dB and we still hit 124 dB C-weighted. That’s how transparent and powerful the L Series is. It’s surprisingly powerful for its size.”
First Avenue’s new concert sound system is a left-right design comprising one L2 over one L2D per side with four KS28 subwoofers below each main array as an LF extension, four Kiva II center-fills (as an optional assist for replacing lost stage volume for artists that are completely on in-ear monitors), and five X12 to fill areas obstructed by staircases or walls.
The system is driven by five new LA7.16i amplified controllers plus two LA12X for the KS28 subs. For monitoring, there are two A15 per side—one Focus and one Wide—as flown side fills, two KS21 per side for side-fill LF extensions, a dozen X15 HiQ wedges, and one KS21 as a drum sub, collectively powered by eight LA12X. All amplifiers are driven with redundant Milan AVB and AES as a fallback. A P1 processor resides in the amp rack and is responsible for the master Milan AVB stream and any additional inputs needed to run into the system separately from the FOH console. A second P1 in the drive rack at FOH converts the console outputs to an AVB stream that is received by the amp rack P1.
