Managed by Live Nation, Palm Beach County’s Cruzan Amphitheatre is South Florida’s premier open-air concert venue. To better serve the 30-or-so productions staged annually at the venue, Cruzan recently installed 24 L-Acoustics KARAi loudspeakers to improve audio coverage at its 12,000-capacity ‘lawn’.
‘With modern long-throw line arrays, the nature of the delay system has changed,’ says Andre Serafini, owner of Beachsound & Lighting, who designed and installed the new system. ‘Most touring engineers will use their own main production PA to cover at least a portion of the lawn area at an amphitheater like this, so the ‘delay’ system has become more of a relay system, complementing and extending the performance of the main PA. This is why it was important that we recommended a system to Live Nation that had unparalleled sonic quality in order to provide the optimal user experience while also being a system that the engineers and system techs would be happy to deal with.’
That solution, according to Serafini, comprises four arrays of six KARAi enclosures (left and right, plus two out fill hangs) flown from the outer lip of the venue’s roof. These are powered and processed by a total of four LA8 amplified controllers housed in the venue’s spotlight towers, minimising cable runs and maximising existing power and signal infrastructure.
‘We knew that it was time to upgrade our aging lawn system and were confident that Beachsound would provide us with the right solution,’ says Live Nation Production Manager, Sarah Barnes. ‘They immediately introduced us to this new L-Acoustics system. The purchase and install were seamless and we couldn’t be happier with the system, its performance, and capabilities.’
According to Beachsound Head of Systems Integration Jerrod Cring, who designed the system with Beachsound Head of Audio, Neil Rosenstock: ‘The touring engineers that come through the area played a large part in the upgrade of the venue.’
‘The KARAi system is an incredible improvement to the venue and has completely changed the way we approached Cruzan Amphitheatre this year,’ says Zac Brown Band System Tech, Preston Soper. ‘In the past, I had to attempt to cover the entire lawn area as well as the reserved seating. This year, I was able to focus on the reserved seating and let the KARAi take care of the lawn seats and it did a great job.’
‘The sonic signature of the high frequency is something we have always appreciated about KARAi,’ Rosenstock adds. ‘It has an incredible ‘hi-fi’ sound with a very punchy tone free of the harshness you can find in other mid-size variable curvature line source cabinets. The high-end definition and clarity was a key component to our decision to spec the KARAi arrays, which have blended and done an amazing job working in conjunction with the different systems that have come through the venue.’
