The 3,100-seat theatre in the heart of downtown St Louis, Missouri, the Stifel Theatre has hosted events spanning opera, Broadway, symphony orchestras and comedy acts, including some of the greatest musical performers in history since opening in 1934. More recently, the theatre invited Spectrum Sound, Nashville, to install a d&b audiotechnik KSL loudspeaker system.
‘All venues have their own set of unique challenges when it comes to designing and implementing house PA,’ says Spectrum System Integration Sales Manager, Ken DeBelius. ‘Stifel Theatre, while beautiful aesthetically, had some typical acoustical challenges with some significant hard reflections that could be exacerbated by amplified PA. This was one of the reasons why we chose the d&b audiotechnik KSL-Series for this space.
‘The very controlled polar directivity of KSL minimises the amount of wasted energy that typically excites a room in bad ways with ordinary loudspeaker systems,’ he explains. ‘During the initial deployment of the rig, everyone was instantly amazed at how well it sounded right out of the gate without even doing much system tuning. It simply sounded great from the start.’
Thr Stifel Theatre staff were familiar with other d&b systems, principally the V-Series, through touring productions. ‘They had not actually heard KSL but, based on Spectrum’s recommendation, they went with this premium solution that will serve their needs for decades,’ DeBelius says.
‘Our number priority as a company is to provide the best experience possible for both performers and guests who visit our theatre,’ says Adrian Silverstein, Stifel Theatre Assistant General Manager. ‘Spectrum, along with Tim Kostal, head of our audio department, understood those needs and through both of their expertise, made it easy to invest in a d&b PA that addresses our need to adapt to the varied productions we host. Spectrum’s willingness to provide their touring amp rack during a chip shortage is just an example of how they will go above and beyond for their clients.’
The Stifel Theatre wanted an auxiliary centre cluster to use with the main KSL arrays or alone for simpler talking heads shows. ‘For this,’ DeBelius says, ‘we elected to use the d&b A-Series Augmented Array. These are suspended directly below the centre flown subwoofer array using an adaptor from the d&b custom shop. Despite their small footprint, they keep up with the main arrays remarkably well.’
d&b ArrayProcessing also played a part in this project, and DeBelius said he rarely installs any d&b systems without ArrayProcessing. ‘The benefits in smoothing the tonal response across the seating planes are totally worth the extra amplifier channels needed. It also greatly assisted providing good coverage into the balcony without excessive level loss, right up to the very top of the high balcony seating without having to resort to separate upper balcony delay fills.’
The full Stifel Theatre KSL installation comprises eight KSL8 elements, 16 KSL12, four KSL-Subs (centre flown array), four SL-Subs (portable for the deck), 18 40D amplifiers, two D80 amplifiers, eight 44S loudspeakers for front fill, three DS10 Dante network bridges, four Yi7P point source loudspeakers for under balcony delay, a single AL60 and three AL90 A-Series loudspeakers, and two M6 wedge monitors.
More: www.dbaudio.com
