L-Acoustics K2 brings new life to Philly’s Franklin
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The venue was eventually acquired by AEG in September 2018 and took on its current moniker, with AEG’s regional partner The Bowery Presents producing shows there by artists like Thom Yorke of Radiohead, Greta Van Fleet, MGMT, and Matt and Kim.
Now, Franklin Music Hall has turned yet another corner with its recent installation of an L-Acoustics K2 loudspeaker system, which has pumped up the volume for its most current raft of touring artists, including LCD Soundsystem - who christened the newly-installed K2 arrays with a four-night stand in March - Car Seat Headrest, The Story So Far, PUP, Mitski, and many other forefront musicians.
This project builds on The Bowery Presents’ many sonic successes with L-Acoustics systems at its other venues, including NYC’s Brooklyn Steel, Terminal 5, and Webster Hall, as well as Boston’s new Roadrunner, which is also now home to a K2 rig.
For much of its life as Electric Factory, the Philadelphia venue was also a pioneer of an earlier L-Acoustics loudspeaker, V-DOSC, one of the first truly world-class, modern touring-sound systems. Thus, with the installation of its new K2 arrays, Philly’s venerable live-music destination is also one of the longest-running L-Acoustics sites in North America.
“The V-DOSC system had been in here since 2004, and in its time, it was the absolute benchmark for sound,” recalls Franklin Music Hall production manager Jerry Market, whose tenure at the venue extends back to its Electric Factory era. “Bauder Audio has been our partner for years, so we had them come in and install the new K2 rig for us.”
Bauder utilized many of the same acoustical designs used for the V-DOSC system, which addressed such anomalies as the original massive windows that shook and rattled when the low end got turned up. There’s still plenty of low end there, too; only now it comes from ten ground-based KS28 subs, which provide low-frequency punch for a main array system comprised of 16 K2 loudspeakers, flown eight per side.
This K2 configuration also takes into account some of Franklin Music Hall’s unique aspects, such as the multiple delay-fill speakers used to get sound into the interior’s nooks and crannies. These include four Kara II used as front-fills, mounted directly atop the downstage edge of the subwoofers using custom supports that also keep them from taking up room on the stage.
There are also nine A15i, featuring both Focus and Wide versions, for fill coverage above and below the balcony and to cover the seating side of stage left. All of this is powered by a combination of 11 LA12X and three LA4X amplified controllers, with delay timings managed through an L-Acoustics P1 processor located at FOH and running the entire system on a Milan-AVB network.
Onstage are 14 coaxial X15 HiQ wedges for monitors, with additional A15 Focus speakers as side-fill stage monitors positioned over five KS21 subs, all powered by an LA12X. Front-of-House and monitor consoles are both DiGiCo desks: an SD10 with a 32-bit SD-Rack and a Quantum225, respectively. Other system elements in the complete renovation of the venue’s audio include Motion Labs distros, Shure and Sennheiser mics, Shure Axient wireless, K&M stands, Racpco Horizon mic cables, an Entertainment Manufacturing analogue split, and Whirlwind W1 and W2 subsnakes.
“We’ve also added new acoustical curtains to further minimize reflections off the walls,” says Market. “But the real star of the sound is K2. It sounds great and it’s keeping Franklin Music Hall the premiere club venue in Philadelphia, just like L-Acoustics has been for decades.”
