The Coach House Concert Theatre in San Juan Capistrano has provided the stage for both regional and international artists for more than 30 years. Until recently, however, the 480-seat venue has struggled to overcome the problems presented by its room acoustics.
‘The room is very difficult,’ admits ESP Management’s Brian English. ‘It has a low ceiling, and the stage is asymmetrically placed, so there’s a larger seating area at house left than at house right. The areas near the bar are underneath a very low ceiling because of VIP booths upstairs. So it’s very difficult to cover the place evenly. The house mix position is up in the balcony, which was horrible with the original PA system because the engineer was out of the coverage area and couldn’t hear.’
English worked with Coach House management and Renkus-Heinz’s Ralph Heinz to design a sound system that would address the problems, using the digitally steerable Renkus-Heinz IC2 system.
‘A lot of acts specify a line array, and the Coach House team wanted to be able to meet that need, b because the ceiling is so low, you can’t really do a conventional line array’ English explains. ‘I flew four clusters of two Renkus-Heinz IC2 steerable arrays per cluster, mounted close to the ceiling so we didn’t have sightline issues. We were able to focus each array exactly where I wanted them to go. You can have up to four steerable beams out of each enclosure, so we were able to take one tight beam and shoot it right through the windows of the VIP area without it splashing all over the wall around the window. We focused a beam at the face of the engineer upstairs, so for the first time in 30 years, you can hear the PA from the mix position.’
Six Renkus-Heinz IC212S-R subwoofers are positioned in the centre, under the stage, providing low-frequency content for the main LR system. Under the stage at the outside corners are two aux-driven IC118S-R powered subwoofers, each with a single 18-inch driver, extending the bottom below 30Hz. ‘The stage is a 4-inch concrete slab, so low-frequency build-up and resonance weren’t a problem,’ says English.
Onstage, ten Renkus-Heinz RH123 cabinets provide stage monitoring. The RH123 is a self-powered, three-way loudspeaker in an enclosure as compact as most two-way designs. Featuring a dual-angle (30° or 45°) cabinet, it makes an excellent low-profile, unobtrusive floor monitor.
Both English and venue owner Gary Folgner report being satisfied with the results: ‘I was really impressed with how well we were able to cover the entire place,’ says English. ‘I can’t name another system I could have put in that would have done what the Renkus-Heinz system did. In addition, its footprint is perfect; it didn’t interfere with the sightlines, which occur at several angles. And because of its powerful output, we were able to hit SPL levels that they’ve never heard in that room before.’
To date, the client’s only complaint was that the system was too loud” ‘Fortunately, that’s easily fixed with a fader,’ because the ceiling is so low, you can’t really do a conventional line array says.
More: www.renkus-heinz.com
