Located in the Gangwon-do Province, South Korea’s Sokcho City lies north of the 38th parallel and was formerly part of North Korea – making its Sokcho Art Center important to the region. The educational centre for art and culture recently completed a major renovation in its main hall/auditorium that involved upgrades to lighting, seats and acoustic treatment, and the installation of an entirely new Clair Brothers sound system.
The sound system for the 600-seat room is designed in a manner that would be unexpected in most other markets, with the subs deployed in the middle of the main PA line array. ‘While this configuration is used on a case-by-case basis, it exists because of the size of our buildings and the available amount of land they sit on, especially in the centre of the city, where to handle the necessary amount of people the rooms are designed to be taller and shallower than typical theatres,’ explains JJ Song, VP of Sales at Clair Brothers Korea. ‘In these cases, the subs in the middle of the line array usually face toward the edge of the balcony and divide the top section of the array from the bottom. The key with this set-up is to have the ability to control and process the system as two line arrays in one cluster.’
The main PA comprises nine Clair Brothers C8 line arrays per side; four flown CS118 subs; two stacked CS218 subs; three CAT115s as centre fill; two kiT15s for stage fill; four 1AM stage monitors; and four 8CXs under the balcony – all powered by Clair Brothers/Lab.gruppen amplifiers. Considerations were made with regard to the quantity of speakers in each array as part of a determined speaker cluster’s location and height, and the system’s ability to fit within a set budget. An Allen & Heath dLive S5000 mixing console was also installed.
‘In 2018, we did a C8 line array demo for a selected group of audio engineers in Korea,’ says Clair Brothers Korea Chief Engineer, Seong Keun Ahn. ‘They were impressed and praised the quality of the sound and the high SPL out of a such a compact box. Especially noteworthy in the C8 speaker design is the integrated passive crossover network that can reduce the amplifier channel count required while functioning as a bi-amped three-way speaker.
‘We must give a great deal of credit to Josh Sadd, Clair Brothers Chief Design Engineer, for designing technology that saves client budgets without compromising sound quality. Here in Sokcho, we held a competitive system demo right in the art centre – Clair Brothers versus two other top brands. The demo took place in front of Sokcho Art Center officials. Of course, they chose Clair Brothers.’
‘Our Clair Brothers system is like an extremely well-built car,’ adds Technical Director/Chief Sound Engineer, Hyo-Seong Song. ‘It drives as you drive without compromising quality. We are enjoying every bit of it.’
