Can You “Tune” a Cactus With a “Lake”?

You certainly can ‘Tune” a cactus, especially if it is the Glass Cactus Performance Venue at the Gaylord Texan Hotel. Dallas based acoustical consultant Bill Johnson, of Acoustic Design Associates, was called in to solve some acoustical issues with the venue. One irritating issue in particular was the amount of sub-bass energy heard in the green room directly behind the stage. The sub-bass frequencies rattled the room and its guests. Walt McKay III, production manager for the Cactus, also wanted the venue’s main speaker system retuned as there had been many people adjusting the system settings over the years.

Bill would address the acoustical issues but called in Electro Acoustics to retune the main sound system. The speakers had been recently repaired and new Lab Gruppen amplifiers with LAKE processing had been installed. Chris Jordan with Electro Acoustics decided to bring in Brad Ricks, application engineer for the JBL Vertec Line Array speakers, and Josh Evans, application engineer from Lab Gruppen, for a day of tuning to bring the system to factory performance standards.

We also decided to reconfigure the sub woofers in a cardioid pattern to solve the green room issue instead of trying to build an acoustical barrier. After a day of tuning with two of the best experts in the business the mission was accomplished! The system sounds brand new and is very clean and consistent in the main coverage area. A substantial improvement! And the green room? The sub bass energy was reduced over 20dB with the new configuration, also a substantial improvement!!

So if you get the right tools and the right people, you really can “Tune a Cactus”.

A huge thank you to JBL and Lab Gruppen for providing excellent customer support!