Historic Warner Grand Theater Receives VUE al-8 line-array upgrade

	Warner Grand Theater's VUE Audiotechnik al-8 line-array

The Warner Grand Theater, as it is known today, is an historic Art Deco theater that originally opened in 1931 as a Warner Bros. Theater. It was one of three similarly lavish Los Angeles area Art Deco movie palaces that were built for the Warner Bros company in the early 1930s. Located in downtown San Pedro CA, the 1,525 seat movie palace has been a thriving community arts center. The theater was renamed the Warner Grand Theatre in the 1980s, and in 1982 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was designated as a Historic Cultural-Monument by the City of Los Angeles #251. in 1996, the theatre was purchased by the Department of Cultural Affairs and has continuously operated this landmark and Art Deco gem since that time.

Saved from possible demolition or re-development in 1995 by a local group of preservation activists, the Warner Grand Theatre is poised to be the hub of this Los Angeles neighborhood's renovated downtown.

After a 2019 upgrade to their lighting system, the Warner Grand had a 96 channel DiGiCo console installed and Bell Event Services spec'd out a new VUE Audiotechnik al-8 line-array system with as-418 subs and hm-112 stage monitors. The installation was completed in July 2020. VUE's Paul Bauman was on-site to fine-tune the system and work with the Warner Grand's front-of-house engineer and master electrician Victor Prudeaux.

Bell Event Services has operated for 20 years providing production services for indoor and outdoor concerts, corporate events, and installations. Tim Campbell, project manager on the Warner Grand installation explains, "We worked closely with Victor Prudeaux as he knows that room better than anyone. The old system lacked headroom and vocal clarity. So we set-out to solve those deficiencies and install a system that would impress."

Prudeaux wears many hats at the Warner Grand,and was invaluable in providing Bell Event Services with more than enough insight into the venue's needs. Prudeaux explains, "With our last system the biggest issues were intelligibility, and overall SPL on the floor and in the balcony. The previous system was extremely undersized for our venue. Once you got to audience sizes around 500 people the system would run out of headroom very fast, In the balcony this issue was just compounded due to the physical distance of the balcony from the PA, also SPL coverage of the balcony was very weak. Our new al-8 VUE line array is a huge game-changer for us. We now have incredible coverage throughout and the vocals have never been cleaner. The clarity is so detailed it's like comparing standard HD to 4k resolutions, but with audio. The beryllium technologies VUE employs in the AL series brings a level of definition and performance that will be hard to beat. I can really turn the system up and never worry about distortion in the high frequencies."

The Warner Grand is now set to resume indoor events as soon as possible. You may find more information about upcoming events at https://www.grandvision.org/. You may find more about Bell Event Services on their site, https://belleventservices.com/.