L-Acoustics powers George Strait’s record-breaking Texas gig

George Strait, known as the ‘King of Country,’ has finished the first half of his farewell tour backed by an L-Acoustics sound system.

With the second leg of dates set to take place in early 2014, the final performance of his 2013 tour took place earlier this month at San Antonio’s Alamodome in front of a record-breaking crowd of more than 73,000.

For touring sound reinforcement, Strait has long been associated with FOH Engineer George Olson and Dallas-based Onstage Systems, which supplied the artist’s standard L-Acoustics V-DOSC and KUDO package for most of this year’s tour. However, given the sheer size of the Alamodome concert in Strait’s hometown, the company chose to deploy its full inventory of K1 enclosures, which it augmented with additional cabinets from fellow Rental Network provider Clearwing Audio, resulting in an impressive total of 120 K1 units.

According to Onstage Systems’ K1 audio tech Eric Thomas and systems tech Jason Chamlee, the eight flown arrays were evenly spaced in a ring above the perimeter of the circular rotating stage. A total of four hangs of 16 K1 with six KARA downfills addressed the longer north and south ends of the room, while the east and west sides were covered by four hangs of 14 K1 plus six KARA, each topped with two K1-SB filler enclosures to maintain visual continuity between all arrays.

To power and process the K1/KARA enclosures, Onstage positioned three LA-RAK touring racks – each containing three LA8 amplified controllers – on top of every array, significantly minimising the copper cable runs. Down on the floor level, four more LA-RAK were deployed to drive 16 dV-DOSC front-fills and 24 SB28 subs set up in an asymmetrical cardioid configuration around the stage.

"Even standing at the very back of the Alamodome’s nosebleed seats, the K1 arrays sounded like they were still right in our faces at more than 360 feet away," said Thomas. "The indoor throw capability of the system is insanely impressive."

"K1’s rigging is also absolutely incredible," he continued. "Once we had the points straightened out, we were able to rig the entire system in four hours, which is just amazing. And utilising LA Network Manager to group individual boxes and adjust a few FIR filters as needed, the system sounded fantastic right away. Although I love V-DOSC and KUDO, trying to load in and fly those boxes for a venue of this size would literally require a couple of days, so from a logistical standpoint, K1 is totally the best option out there for stadium sound."

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