Take Me Downtown is Lady Antebellum’s third headlining tour, taking the trio across North America anthrough venues including casinos, civic centres and amphitheaters, both indoors and out.
For most of the group’s performances, touring sound provider Sound Image flew left and right main PA arrays of 14 L-Acoustics K1 plus four Kara down fill, each flanked by six flown K1-SB subs. Out fill comprised 12 Kudo per side, with four SB28 subs per side groundstacked below ihandled the low end. Four more Kara – two per side – were additionally used for stage front fill.
At some venues, as few as eight K1 enclosures per side were enough to fill the room while larger venues required the full complement, with 18 per side. The shows used an average of between 12 and 14 boxes per side each night, underscoring the range of room types the tour covered. Twenty-four L-Acoustics LA8 amplified controllers housed in eight LA-Rak powered the system.
‘The K1 is a really amazing PA system,’ says the band’s longtime FOH mixer, Brett ‘Scoop’ Blanden, noting that the speakers’ frequency response is so full range that they were able to do at least one smaller corporate-event show in Tallahassee without subwoofers. ‘And when we did outdoor shows, the system would throw for days. It has tons of projection. With other arrays of similar size, you might need to use a delay array, but the K1 seems to out-throw them all. And its waveguide is really impressive, keeping the frequency response consistent.’
Blanden also reports that the sound dispersion was consistent, allowing the band to use the stage thrust without concerns about feedback : ‘I’d say that as much as 75 per cent of the music is performed between 43-ft and 53-ft in front of the PA system,’ he says. ‘We had a peak show volume of 102dB and an average between 99dB and 100dB, and we were running at least four open dynamic RF vocal mics at one time on the thrust. But the K1’s waveguide is designed to compensate for the curvature of the diaphragm. It affords us even frequency coverage at distance, so I didn’t have to get into the graph like I would have had to using other PAs.
‘The flat frequency response of the K1 is incredible,’ he adds. ‘It’s like a blank canvas for music – it gives you back exactly what you put in, so it’s a great system for any type of music. It certainly has been for Lady A’s.’
