The Eccles Center, home of the Sundance Film Festival, has undergone a sound renovation adding an L-Acoustics KARAi line source array system. First opened in 1998, the venue hosts national dance troupes, musical acts and student productions as well as Robert Redford’s annual film festival.
The focus of the renovation was the 1,269-seat Kearns Auditorium. Salt Lake City-based installers Poll Sound successfully bid for the project, and opted for the KARAi system: “L-Acoustics provides a very comprehensive and systematic approach to sound reinforcement design,” said Deward Timothy, Poll Sound’s owner and lead sound system designer.
Timothy added: “Using SOUNDVISION we were able to model the space, anticipate any problem reflection issues, and solve them right from the start. And the model always works. In all the systems we’ve installed, we have never had one where the performance didn’t match what the model predicted.”
In addition to the KARAi arrays, Kearns Auditorium also received a central ARCS WIFO array, six SB18i subs – both flown and stage-stacked – 12 discreet 5XT coaxials divided as stage lip fills and balcony under-fills, two ARCS FOCUS as a balcony delay system, and LA8 and LA4X amplified controllers.
“Another plus with L-Acoustics is that even though there were three different cabinet types in this system, they are all voiced to sound the same,” said Timothy. “So when you move from the main house to under the balcony, the sound system personality does not change; it sounds the same in both locations. And the final results of this installation have been so pristine; the clarity is remarkable. I measured intelligibility and it was 0.79, so really nice.”
