Since their 2011 victory at NBC’s The Sing-Off, Pentatonix has been building its following. With a 2015 Grammy Award and nearly a billion YouTube video views, the five-piece a cappella troupe recently wrapped up a 21-date tour of North America. Sound Image served as the sound reinforcement provider for the tour and supplied an L-Acoustics K2 system at the request of Chris Aman, who served as both FOH engineer and production manager.
Aman had previously mixed on a K2 rig on the final night of Connecticut’s Gathering of the Vibes festival. ‘With every other rig, there have always been “normal” adjustments that needed to be made – like compensating for waveguide turbulence or turning the horns down several dB,’ he recalls. ‘But I immediately noticed that K2 was much closer to what I was looking for, especially in the high frequency. I made one tiny little cut around 2.5k that day and, boom, it was there.’
Going into this year’s On My Way Home tour of North American theatres and smaller arenas, Aman turned to K2:‘Mike Adams at Sound Image and I had initially been discussing a variety of loudspeaker options for this tour, but after having a conversation with bass vocalist Avi Kaplan, I got a really good idea of what they were trying to achieve sonically,’ he says. ‘So I called Mike back and told him that K2 was the right PA for this, especially given its definition in the midrange.’
The typical array set-up for this tour used 14 K2 per side flanked by out fill of nine Kara. Four more Kara were spread out across the deck for front fill, with 12 SB28 subs delivering the low-end reinforcement. All loudspeakers were powered and managed by six LA-Raks each loaded with three LA8 amplified controllers.
Although a live show that features five unaccompanied vocalists (aside from two songs where beat-boxer Kevin ‘KO’ Olusola plays a cello) has a different acoustic dynamic to an amplified band, the group’s frequency range is surprisingly wide: ‘Avi hits a low A, which means he sings down to 55Hz, so I treat his vocal like a bass guitar,’ the engineer says. ‘One of the things I really like about K2 is that it goes down to 35Hz, so I basically do everything in the array then reinforce it a bit with the subs for a little air movement.’
Aman further points out that the system’s intelligibility and ‘natural-ness’ also means that he can keep the overall volume levels in check without sacrificing impact. ‘I mix the show at around 95dB,’ he says. ‘Having a PA that is this defined and in-your-face means that I don’t have to mix it loud to get the definition this act requires. Everything’s right there at a very comfortable volume and both the band’s management and fans love it.’
With the North American and European legs behind them, Pentatonix will spend the summer opening for a top act before getting back on the road again, with Sound Image’s L-Acoustics K2 system.
