Live Nation Expects To ‘Fillmore’ Seats In Charlotte With Soundcraft Vi4™

Two 48-input Soundcraft Vi4 digital live mixing consoles perform flawlessly in FOH and monitor mixing roles.

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina — The Fillmore Charlotte, a 20,000-square-foot venue at the North Carolina Music Factory’s entertainment complex in Charlotte, North Carolina’s Fourth Ward neighborhood, stays true to the tradition of the original Fillmore theaters. The venue, which opened on June 19 with Georgia acoustic rocker Corey Smith headlining, has the Fillmore’s trademark red velvet draperies, ornate chandeliers, custom lighting and vintage concert posters. The building, once an historic Charlotte manufacturing site, was reinvigorated by Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promoter, as the latest in its growing chain of clubs bearing the Fillmore name. And it also stays true to one other critical Fillmore legacy: great sound, thanks to the implementation of two Soundcraft Vi4™ digital live mixing consoles at front-of-house and monitor positions. These work in conjunction with a PA system using components from JBL, Crown and dbx, creating a perfectly scaled sound system that couples the Fillmore’s grand musical heritage with 21st century technology. The sound system for the Fillmore Charlotte, as with all club systems in the Live Nation chain, was designed and installed by Sound Image of Escondido, California.

The 2,000-seat Fillmore Charlotte has brilliant sound, with the Soundcraft Vi4 digital live mixing consoles at the center of the action. Both Vi4 consoles are configured identically, with 48 inputs on 24 faders, and a total of 27 output busses available for use as masters, groups, auxes or matrices. And the features of the larger Soundcraft Vi6, such as the highly acclaimed Vistonics™ II touch-screen user interface, Soundcraft FaderGlow™ fader function display and the unequalled audio quality, are all present on the Vi4. While it’s the largest club of its kind in the region, Rich Davis, Audio Engineer with Sound Image and who is supervising the sound systems installations for the Live Nation Fillmore and House of Blues venues, says that it’s nonetheless an intimate place. “There’s a lot of acoustical treatment in the room, which really reduces reflections,” he explains. “The Soundcraft V14 consoles are the perfect fit for a club like this. You have an enormous amount of control over the color and the volume of the sound. The Vi4’s interface is so intuitive that visiting engineers get the hang of it almost immediately, both at FOH and on monitors. And it’s a great-sounding console.”

The Fillmore Charlotte’s tight acoustics and low ceiling are handled exquisitely by a stereo PA system comprised of seven JBL VerTec® VT4888DP powered 3-way midsize line array enclosures per side, augmented by six JBL ASB6128 dual 18-inch subs powered by three Crown MA9000i amplifiers, and four JBL VRX932LAP powered side fill speakers. The stage monitor system employs 10 JBL SRX712M 12-inch stage monitors and four JBL VRX915M 15-inch stage monitors. A pair of JBL VP7215/64DPAN powered 2-way speakers and three JBL VPSB7118DPAN powered 18-inch subwoofers comprise the PA’s delay component. The system is controlled via a dbx Drive Rack 4800 processor, with a dbx 162SL stereo compressor and dbx 1046 quad compressor/limiter. Networking and management of the system is provided via Harman’s HiQnet™ System Architect™ platform. “A room like this can be a challenge,” says Davis, noting that less reverberant spaces like this often demand more power and more speaker enclosures, potentially impacting sight lines. “That would have happened without the JBL VerTec boxes. We were able to fill this room with far fewer boxes, and the system still has more headroom than any engineer could ever ask for. What a great system.”

The Fillmore Charlotte is operated by Live Nation, the largest producer of live concerts in the world, annually producing more than 22,000 concerts for 1,600 artists in 33 countries. The company sells more than 50 million concert tickets a year.

Soundcraft and Studer are units of Harman International Industries, Incorporated (www.harman.com).

Harman International designs, manufactures and markets a wide range of audio and infotainment products for the automotive, consumer and professional markets, and maintains a strong presence in the Americas, Europe and Asia, employing more than 11,000 people worldwide. The Harman International family of brands includes AKG®, Audioaccess®, Becker®, BSS®, Crown®, dbx®, DigiTech®, Harman Kardon®, Infinity®, JBL®, Lexicon®, Mark Levinson®, Revel®, QNX®, Soundcraft® and Studer®. Harman International’s stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “NYSE: HAR.”

Harman HiQnet™ is the world's first connectivity and control protocol that integrates all product categories in the signal chain for professional audio systems of all types, size, and applications. Harman HiQnet no longer requires the user to manage multiple disparate operating systems or be responsible for programming individual signal processors, speaker controllers, wireless microphone systems, and mixing consoles. HiQnet was developed by engineers from across the Harman Pro Group and is coordinated by the System Development and Integration Group (SDIG), a team of dedicated systems specialists based in Salt Lake City, Utah.