SRB Consulting & Design recently installed a Martin Audio system of WPC line arrays, SXH218 and SX118 subs and CDD12s as part of a comprehensive upgrade at the Speaking Rock Entertainment Center in El Paso, Texas.
‘Speaking Rock is located on a native American reservation and has live entertainment seven nights a week with outdoor concerts once a month in the parking lots and a large park nearby,’ SRB owner Scott Brown explains. ‘It’s the go-to area for entertainment because people know there’s always something going on there. The main room has a kind of large club atmosphere with two storeys and wraparound balconies, a main stage and the floor.’
Concerts at Speaking Rock including artists ranging from Chubby Checker to Ratt, Molotov and Sammy Hagar.
The sound system comprises five Martin Audio WPC per side – flown alongside the stage with out fill of four WPC on stage left, since the room is L-shaped. Eight SXH218 subs are groundstacked on the floor directly under the edge of the stage. The system is powered with 11 Martin Audio iK42 amps using one box resolution for optimum coverage. CDD12s mounted in the balcony are used for extra speech reinforcement in lower volume situations.
‘It’s the audio quality that we needed because it’s a very difficult room with concrete floor, adobe walls and lots of reverberation, which the WPC’s cleaned up immediately,’ Brown says.
In addition, WPMs are positioned on stage for band side fill along with four SX118s, which are used for side or drum fill, depending on the set-up. Four CDD12-WRs are mounted above the outdoor bars and the doors into the facility.
‘They wanted to achieve clarity and intelligibility given the challenging acoustics of the room,’ Brown says. ‘Once we were testing the system after installation, several of the staff members were walking through and even though they didn’t know audio, they were saying, “Wow, what happened? What changed?” It was really cool knowing that everyone from the bartenders to housekeepers and guest services were amazed at us just running playback to tune the system. This system really is a monster difference from what we had before.’
Because the performance space is a multipurpose room that can be used for everything from row seating to high table-tops, banquets and formal dinners, the owners wanted to ensure even coverage throughout the room. ‘And this we definitely achieved,’ Brown reports. ‘In terms of music reproduction, the system performs way better than any other we’ve ever had in the room – there’s a night-and-day difference. It gives you the true sound of what the music is supposed to sound like.’
Echoing Brown’s sentiments, Emmanuel Garcia, Production Manager and FOH engineer at Speaking Rock, adds: ‘It’s an awesome PA. The clarity you can get out of it, especially on vocals is where it makes the most obvious difference. We have all kinds of musical artists on stage and the Martin Audio system performs extraordinarily well. You can pretty much get whatever sound you want out of it. It gives us really even coverage and goes way beyond comparisons with previous systems. I love mixing on it.’
More: www.martin-audio.com
