Groovin' at the Grove
The venue and sound system can now handle dinners, corporate events and open-floor rock concerts. Production Manager Chris Wrightsman describes the venue's many changes.
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Few theaters in the U.S. have retained their original name and design intention throughout their career. The uniquely designed 2,200-capacity The Grove of Anaheim is one such venue that has gone through many changes. Located in Orange County, California, The Grove of Anaheim was first born in 1996 as Tinsel Town. The building was designed as a themed soundstage-like venue, resembling a mock Universal Studios/Warner Brothers film production lot. Tinsel Town staged Academy Award-like dinner theater ceremonies for visitors, until management quickly realized they were not making any money with their one show concept. The building was soon sold as a concert venue. New owners renamed the venue Sun Theater in August 1999, and it was again renamed The Grove of Anaheim in December 2001. |
Philadelphia-based SMG, The Grove's parent company, is a huge public assembly facility management company, operating more than 142 venues in North America and Europe for a combined total of more than 1.4 million entertainment venue seats. The firm also manages 35 convention centers representing more than 8.2 million square feet of exhibition space.
Production manager Chris Wrightsman previously worked as the operations manager for Industrial Sound, the production company that installed and managed Tinsel Town's concert sound system. Mixing sound since 1988, Wrightsman first freelanced with Industrial Sound touring nationally with Van's Warped Tour, Cherry Poppin' Daddies and Goldfinger for four years before joining Industrial Sound as operations manager in 1998.
In between concert tour work, Wrightsman ran the Tinsel Town sound system until he became head engineer in May 2001, when new management purchased the venue and Industrial Sound opted to not renew their system maintenance contract. Wrightsman recently became the production and audio manager, when the new management retained director of production Ray Woodbury as production contractor for RK Diversified Entertainment.
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Wrightsman's responsibilities as the production manager entail, "Pawning all audio responsibilities off to the fulltime audio guy, Phil Johnson, the theater's A1," he quips. "But overall we're really busy handling over 20 events a month, ranging from thrash metal concerts by Slayer to AT&T corporate meetings." The Grove of Anaheim's modular Vegas cabaret-style seating and table layout is removed for general admission rock concerts, Wrightsman comments, "Otherwise, it would all be firewood after a thrash metal concert which, fortunately, are few and far between." |
The ability to quickly go from a Vegas-style seating arrangement that can accommodate over 1,250, depending upon the seating arrangement, to general admission for 2,200 makes The Grove of Anaheim a popular venue with many artists and agents. Wrightsman points out that, for the most part, shows are more middle-of-the-road acts utilizing the Vegas-style seating.
Soundstage Design
The room is designed just like a large soundstage found on any major movie studio lot. "It's a big square concrete room with a big giant ceiling grid above your head, except we have a huge stage at one end of the room," Wrightsman states. The stage, including wings, is 69-feet wide and 40-feet deep and the proscenium is two inches short of 40-feet. Behind the proscenium is another 60-feet of width, including performance area and work wings.
The physical size of the room is 120-feet from the up-stage edge to the back-of-the-house wall and the room is approximately 80-feet wide, with a ceiling height of 90-feet to the top of the beamed ceiling grid. From the first tier in front of the stage, the room rakes up approximately one to two feet on each of its five tiers. At the back of the room, a spectator is approximately six to eight-feet above the main floor level. There is no balcony, but there is a false overhang on the back-of-house wall. A remote robotic video camera center-mounted above the overhang is utilized for image magnification. The FOH mix position is centered in a booth, against the back-of-the-house wall.
"It's a pretty live room," Wrightsman states describing the acoustics. "It's all concrete, but every wall and beam are treated with a spray-on acoustical foam, except for the plaster back wall and ceiling. Even with that much acoustical treatment, it's still very live sounding. Every soundman and act that comes in here states, "you have a live room here,' but it's not something that detracts from the audio system's performance once we fill the room with bodies. It's a very manageable room."
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Wrightsman's responsibilities involve all matters of show coordination. He points out that he is very hands-on when it comes to mixing the shows, but adds, "I do run FOH sound for many events, but being the production manager is so time intensive, I fall back on a roster of approximately eight freelance soundmen for when business is very busy." When it comes to hiring freelance soundmen, Wrightsman points out, "I like working with the guys that are lesser known, as opposed to the high-priced soundmen. Yes, the experienced guys are more expensive, and they will do a great job. But, I am all about working with guys who want to learn and have good attitudes, as opposed to working with someone who is very experienced, but may have reservations about not wanting to work on a certain piece of gear. So far, that criteria has worked well for me." Wrightsman's responsibilities involve all matters of show coordination. He points out that he is very hands-on when it comes to mixing the shows, but adds, "I do run FOH sound for many events, but being the production manager is so time intensive, I fall back on a roster of approximately eight freelance soundmen for when business is very busy." |
Wrightsman's responsibilities involve all matters of show coordination. He points out that he is very hands-on when it comes to mixing the shows, but adds, "I do run FOH sound for many events, but being the production manager is so time intensive, I fall back on a roster of approximately eight freelance soundmen for when business is very busy."
When it comes to hiring freelance soundmen, Wrightsman points out, "I like working with the guys that are lesser known, as opposed to the high-priced soundmen. Yes, the experienced guys are more expensive, and they will do a great job. But, I am all about working with guys who want to learn and have good attitudes, as opposed to working with someone who is very experienced, but may have reservations about not wanting to work on a certain piece of gear. So far, that criteria has worked well for me."
Corporate events rarely ever come into the theater with their own gear, although, Wrightsman says, "You have soundmen that have music carts for customized cues, but the nuts-and-bolts of the rig rarely changes for these types of events."
Major touring bands and acts usually carry their own consoles, monitors and stage electronics, but rarely do they carry their own PA for a 2,000 to 3,000-seat venue tour. Wrightsman adds, "I have about three acts per year that will want me to take down my entire FOH system. The majority of the acts who have PA on their trucks will listen to our system and ultimately decide to leave their sound system on the trucks."
The New System
The Grove of Anaheim installed a new Mach loudspeaker system on May 1, 2002, making it the third sound system installed since the venue was built in 1996. The first Tinsel Town sound system was designed for dinner theater performances and was quickly removed once the venue was sold off to become the Sun Theater. The Sun's sound system, installed in August 1999, consisted of second-hand rental inventory gear that "Essentially got piecemealed into the venue, but it served its purpose well for two and a half years," says Wrightsman. "But, ultimately, it wasn't the right system for the room. The second sound system had been used for several years as a touring system prior to being installed in the room, and recently the mismatched high-frequency drivers were starting to exhibit their age and were losing their crispness."
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The new Mach loudspeaker system consists of 12 Mach SlingShot loudspeakers, six cabinets per flown array, with each array consisting of four Mach MS1262 horn-loaded three-way full-range cabinets and two Mach M15X2 horn-loaded Flybass cabinets. In addition, six M12T compact two-way full-range cabinets are dispersed along the edge of the stage for front fill. Twelve horn-loaded Mach Ballister subs, featuring a single 1000W 18-inch woofer, are utilized with six Ballister cabinets per side. Wrightsman notes, "We have yet to take down the Mach sound system for any act since we installed it on May 1, 2002. At first, people think lighting when they see the Mach loudspeakers, since it's produced by a division of Martin Professional, and they are kind of skeptical. But, when we turn this rig on, you hear that it's really pro equipment." Additionally, the new system, consisting of significantly smaller profile loudspeakers, shaved off about 25-percent of the speaker cluster width, thereby improving the sightlines to the left and right 9-foot by 12-foot video screens. Wrightsman adds, "Also, we do not have to fly-out the sound system for corporate events that depend upon video." Wrightsman uses two new Italian-made PowerSoft 7000 digital power amps to drive all of the Mach subwoofers. "I can't believe what the technology has come to these days," Wrightsman exclaims. "These two, single-space PowerSoft digital power amps put out 3500W of power per side and drive all 12 of the subwoofers. 14,000W is a lot of power driving the low-end, and the PowerSoft amps simply do not get hot, and they sound great." EAW KF300s remain from the original Tinsel Town installation that function as a delay system, flown off a beam in the middle of the house. |
In addition, there are EAW UB12s installed over the outdoor courtyard stage, which cover an area approximately 60-feet by 60-feet.
Monitors consist of 10 proprietary double 12-inch/1-inch high wedges and EAW KF-650 side fills. Four brand new Mach 15-inch/2-inch M1502T wedges and four Mach 12-inch/2-inch M1201T wedges also recently added to the inventory.
The balance of the sound system is driven by the existing QSC Audio PowerLight 6.0s driving the low-mids, QSC PL 2.0s driving the mids and QSC PL 1.0s driving the highs. Monitor amps consist of HED amps, which are an older amp, "That were installed in the very beginning after doing many tours," Wrightsman notes. "They are still doing a pretty good job with only one amp going down in the last two years."
The FOH console consists of a Yamaha PM3500, which was installed in the early days of the Sun Theater, along with the Yamaha M3000 monitor console.
The Processing
All signal processing and routing is from a Peavey MediaMatrix MainFrame, except for the flown Mach SlingShot system, which is processed by the three Mach M20.06 Digital Loudspeaker Management System processors. The Mach processor, which are six-way or three-way stereo per rack space units, has 50 preset programs with settings for all Mach speaker models. Each preset offers optimized crossover points and slopes, polarity, delay and EQ settings to fit the characteristics of each Mach loudspeaker.
Continuing, Wrightsman notes, "The MediaMatrix is pretty cool in this application and, except for the FOH mains, it is signal processing the front fill speakers, the courtyard system, backstage speakers, even the bathroom speakers. When I first started working here, I knew MediaMatrix was running the system, but I was afraid to start playing around with it. I didn't want to do something that I couldn't undo. I learned the MediaMatrix on my own since no one was here at the theater to teach me. Once I got into it, MediaMatrix is very flexible and easy to understand, with the ability set-up any kind of signal processing, from crossovers to compression, limiting, gating, EQing, and delay."
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Wrightsman has even created several MediaMatrix views for various types of shows; one is for the Club Raw rave dance party, which is a very high volume with extra low-end event. Wrightsman will even MediaMatrix artist views for performers he knows will come back year after year. "MediaMatrix is not your normal way of signal processing for a live performance venue, but I really like the flexibility MediaMatrix offers," Wrightsman states. "I don't have a time delay for everything I need, but MediaMatrix will give me a time delay wherever I need it, anywhere in the signal path." |
The Grove of Anaheim also has an amazing lighting system. Wrightsman says, "We're one of the few clubs that has a complete 120K conventional system, consisting of 60 moving Martin fixtures, 30 MAC 600s and 30 MAC 500s. When an artist comes in with a specific lighting design that cannot be duplicated with our lighting system, they will bring in their own lighting gear. But again, that happens quite sparingly, maybe three times per year and only 20 to 30 percent of the artists augment our lighting system with their lighting gear. Most of the time, they just plug in their Whole Hog Controller and run the show with our lights."
The Grove of Anaheim also has a full editing suite with the ability to do a six camera shoot of the performance, with most shows being covered by two handheld cameras and the back wall robotic camera. "A big part of the theater's appeal is every performance is videoed, free of charge to the act," states Wrightsman. "At the end of the night, they get a broadcast quality copy of their performance for whatever use they can think of." Six camera shoots are usually reserved for corporate events, while DVD productions for artists are shot and produced at the theater.
Adding a new sound system allowed Wrightsman and staff to fine tune all of the production elements and components in anticipation of the very first performance on the new Mach sound system by heavy metal thrash rockers Slayer. At the end of load-out, their soundman approached Wrightsman and said, "Man, you're not going to have any problems with this sound system." Wrightsman concludes, "I took that as a pretty glowing rave review."
Rich Williams is a freelance journalist serving various entertainment technology manufacturing industries, including musical instruments, audio, video, broadcast, lighting, staging and multimedia systems integration. Contact him at avwriter@mindspring.com
September/October 2002 Live Sound International