ACOUSTICS Delivers Live Sound on The View

NY, NY -- The View, ABC Daytime's talk show featuring Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, and Sherri Shepherd, kicked off its current season with a new set design and an overhaul of its studio audience sound reinforcement system.

For the project, sound designer Dan Gerhard specified a full L-ACOUSTICS rental package comprising 26 KIVA enclosures split among seven arrays collectively processed and powered by four LA4 amplified controllers. Gerhard worked with both Bob Rendon and Matt Bell of PRG Audio's Mount Vernon crew, which supplied, installed, and commissioned the new system in TV Studio 24 at ABC Television Center East in Manhattan.

The network additionally chose to purchase six L-ACOUSTICS 112XT coaxial enclosures, plus several more LA4 amplifiers, as a permanent monitor package for The View's guest musician performance area.

Unlike most other talk shows that feature a single host and guest, The View features five hosts plus guests seated in close proximity to the audience, creating a unique -- somewhat challenging -- acoustical environment. According to Jeffrey Rothfus, engineering manager, ABC Daytime, however, KIVA delivered. "The tight pattern of our flown KIVA arrays allowed the sound designers to raise the sound level delivered to the audience without increasing bleed-through to the talent microphones," he said.

According to Matt Bell, who served as the project manager for the install, "From the front row seats on the main floor all the way to the back of the grandstands, the KIVA hangs have dramatically improved both intelligibility and coverage throughout the room. The new loudspeaker arrangement also allowed us to reduce the number of zones from more than ten down to seven, which has simplified mixing and generally made everything more coherent."

Bell adds, "Out of all of the line array products I've worked with, I have to add that KIVA is by far the easiest one I've ever hung--and not just because it's one of the smallest boxes on the market. L-ACOUSTICS really did a fantastic job in designing its integral rigging system. It's remarkably simple to use."

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