WinStar World Casino and Resort in Thackerville, Oklahoma has built a reputation for bringing the world’s most renowned touring acts to Oklahoma audiences, showcasing A-list entertainers like Pitbull, Jay Leno, KISS, Bob Dylan, Brandi Carlile, and many others. Now, WinStar has upped the ante with Lucas Oil Live, a new 6,500-seat performance arena with an exclusive club seating level and private lounge, taking its entertainment ambitions to the next level.
Lucas Oil Live celebrated its grand opening with a performance by Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band on October 13, and has already hosted a steady stream of shows from Zac Brown Band, Miranda Lambert, The Beach Boys, Leon Bridges, Peter Frampton, Smokey Robinson, Adam Sandler, Johnny Mathis, Blake Shelton, and other top acts performing on a stage big enough to hold an NBA basketball court. And they’re all playing through one other superstar: an L-Acoustics K Series loudspeaker system specified by consultant Jaffe Holden and installed by LD Systems.
The new concert sound system is a stereo left-right design featuring 12 K2 enclosures over four Kara II downs, with eight K1-SB subwoofers flown behind each main hang. Four Kara IIi comprise a center cluster, while two A15 are hung as out-fills. Seven KS28 ground subs are mounted into the face of the stage, topped by a line of ten compact Kiva II front-fills. Two delay hangs of two A15 each round out the system, which is driven by a combination of ten LA12X and six LA4X amplified controllers.
LD Engineering Manager Anthony DiDonato notes that L-Acoustics Soundvision software was instrumental in how the system achieves exceptional coverage of every spot in the deep seating area. “Each seat gets the same experience, which was important to us,” he says. “Jaffe Holden did a great job of designing and acoustically treating the room, and Soundvision allowed us to really optimize the concert sound system’s performance throughout the full audience space.”
Michael Markley, Senior AV Consultant at Jaffe Holden, came onto the project after the initial design had been done and noted that the absorptive acoustical-treatment panels applied to the venue walls had significantly reduced its reverberance, giving it an RT value of 1.0 at the mid frequencies and less than 1.5 at the low frequencies. This created the perfect runway for K2’s coverage capabilities.
“It’s a fairly large venue; it’s very wide but not that deep, which is a challenge to dispersing sound evenly and consistently to the sides of the room,” he explains. “K2 gives us a number of dispersion options, from 70 to 110 degrees, and we needed the widest. The result has been what we wanted and predicted: excellent and consistent coverage across the entire seating area, thanks to K2, along with a small but effective center cluster of four Kara IIi. It’s the perfect system for a great music-performance space.”
DiDonato agrees: “L-Acoustics is always at the top of the list on contract riders, and it was the brand that we felt would best accommodate the level of touring artists that will be coming here,” he says. “K Series is just a fantastic-sounding system and it has absolutely exceeded our expectations for Lucas Oil Live.”
For more information on WinStar World Casino and Resort’s new Lucas Oil Live venue, visit www.winstar.com/entertain/lucas-oil-live. Jaffe Holden and LD Systems can be found online at www.jaffeholden.com and www.ldsystems.com.
