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XLR deploys L-Acoustics K3 in Wallonia’s largest live music venue

OM, a venue located in Seraing, Belgium, on the banks of the Meuse just outside Liège, is the largest live music space in Wallonia. Opened in October 2023, its main room holds up to 1,700 people and programmes everything from metal and jazz to techno and hip-hop.

According to Venue Director Fabrice Lamproye, installing an appropriate audio system has been a challenge - the technical brief demanded festival-grade SPL and full-bandwidth coverage in a space where neither visual bulk nor subwoofer sprawl were acceptable. L-Acoustics Certified Provider XLR was brought on board to deliver the project. Their proposed solution: L-Acoustics K3.

“As someone from Liège, I come to OM almost every week as a punter”, says XLR CEO Louis Lukusa. “I was personally invested in getting this right.” XLR has over fifteen years’ experience deploying L-Acoustics across Belgium and Luxembourg, distributing across theatres, cultural centres, clubs and bars.

OM’s brief was to design and deploy a system that would perform consistently across every genre. It had to be high-spec enough to satisfy the expectations of international touring productions, all without visually dominating the design of a relatively intimate space. K3 turned out to answer both requirements: rated 40 Hz to 20 kHz with no external subwoofer dependency, it delivers full-range output in a package compact enough to disappear into the room.

“We didn’t have to rely on additional subwoofer deployment to fill out the low end”, Lukusa notes. Fabrice Lamproye, OM’s team coordinator and booking agent, adds: “We’ve been working with L-Acoustics for years now, we have another system in a smaller venue that we’re really happy with, and that’s why we opted for K3 at OM.”

With K3 selected, XLR moved into the design phase using L-Acoustics Soundvision, modelling the system to verify the coverage predictions and refine the speaker positions. OM’s 1950s industrial design means that its acoustic environment can be challenging, and being able to model and plan for this in Soundvision before a single cabinet was hung made a significant difference, according to the team. “With eight K3 per side, we could cover 100 percent of the audience area without a single delay speaker”, says Lukusa. “We achieved about 3 dB distribution across the full audience and a sound integrity figure of almost 93 percent.”

The main system centres on two hangs of eight K3 per side - the install variant of K3, specified here for its permanent rigging credentials. Subwoofer coverage is delivered by four KS28 per side, flown alongside the main arrays rather than ground-stacked. The side-hung configuration serves the venue’s electronic programme well, supporting the kind of stereo bass imaging that these genres demand. A pair of X12 address the near-field in-fill areas, while four A10 Wide are deployed as front-fills. Six LA12X supply amplification.

“We wanted to bring the feeling of a big festival into a mid-size venue, and that’s exactly what we’ve done”, Lamproye concludes.

Pictured: Johnny Marr performing at OM. (Photos: Alexandre Aretz/Goldo)

www.l-acoustics.com

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