The Cruzan Amphitheatre in South Florida has recently had 24 L-Acoustics KARAi loudspeaker enclosures installed to deliver improved audio coverage to its lawn, which seats 12,000 concertgoers.
Located in Palm Beach County, the 19,000-capacity amphitheatre is South Florida’s premier open-air concert venue. It is managed by Live Nation, which presents approximately 30 productions annually at the venue.
“With modern long-throw line arrays, the nature of the delay system has changed,” explained Andre Serafini, owner of Miami Gardens-based Beachsound & Lighting, which 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 amphitheatre 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, ultimately ended up consisting of four arrays of six KARAi enclosures – left and right, plus two outfill 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 ageing lawn system and were confident that Beachsound would provide us with the right solution,” said Live Nation production manager Sarah Barnes. “They immediately introduced us to this new, state-of-the-art 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,” noted Preston Soper, Zac Brown Band system tech. “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,” added Beachsound’s Rosenstock. “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.”
