COMPANY PROFILE: L-Acoustics
A NEW ERA FOR L-ACOUSTICS 1984 WAS AN INTERESTING YEAR IN MUSIC; MARVIN GAYE WAS FATALLY SHOT, ALICE COOPER WENT ON HIATUS, BBC RADIO BANNED THE PLAYING OF RELAX BY FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD, MICHAEL JACKSON WON EIGHT GRAMMYS - BREAKING ALL PREVIOUS RECORDS - AND THE RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS RELEASED THEIR DEBUT ALBUM. IT WAS ALSO THE YEAR DR. CHRISTIAN HEIL FOUNDED A COMPANY IN A PARISIAN SUBURB THAT WENT ON TO SHAPE THE WAY IN WHICH THE PRO AUDIO INDUSTRY THINKS ABOUT LINE SOURCE DESIGN. TPi’S KELLY MURRAY REPORTS FROM MARCOUSSIS ON HOW L-ACOUSTICS’ LATEST PRODUCT, THE K2, IS YET ANOTHER TRIUMPH FOR THE L-ACOUSTICS LEGACY. 30 years ago Heil, a particle physicist with a keen interest in live music, founded C.HEIL.TEA, an electro-acoustic engineering business that would later be re-named L-Acoustics. Four years of research and development later, L-Acoustics unveiled its MTD115 / LLC coaxial loudspeaker system. The product was quickly deemed a success and enabled the company to respond to the needs of the industry with further innovation, cemented in 1993 with the arrival of the V-DOSC line array system. Heil and colleague Professor Marcel Urban pioneered the use of their Wavefront Sculpture Technology (WST) theory as the basis for the design. This meant stacked loudspeakers would become a thing of the past and the ‘true’ line source was born. As a result of this engineering excellence, L-Acoustics is today debatably one of the top three pro audio manufacturers in the world. 76
Notable products that followed include the dV-DOSC modular line source, the KUDO variable directivity system, the ARCS constant curvature system, the flagship K1 - a large format WST line source system commonly used in grand scale outdoor events - and its new, smaller sibling, the K2 variable curvature line source PA. It is this product, launched in 2014 and taken on tour with world-class artists which has most recently caught the attention of system specifiers the globe over. To better understand the success of the technological innovation displayed by L-Acoustics over the last three decades, TPi travelled to Marcoussis, Paris, to the company’s HQ to see behind the scenes and insist on building a K2 (more on that later). In a glass meeting room - which allows staff and visitors to feel part of an open environment - we met Florent Bernard, Head of Touring Rental /
Applications with a background in international touring. As a sound engineer for the likes of Radiohead, Peter Gabriel and NIN, Bernard certainly knows how to handle the live audio world. Like Heil, Bernard also studied science (biochemistry in his case) and gravitated toward his passion for music. “I very quickly started working in this industry as a FOH and monitor engineer, and soon met Christian Heil. This was around the time V-DOSC was being introduced and there was a lot of interest surrounding this technology… as an outside engineer, I could finally find the kind of fidelity in direct sound that I’d been looking for,” Bernard explained. After 15 years on the road, he was lured home to France to become part of the L-Acoustics family from within. “One of the best motivations for me was working within a team and develop products for the long run, not just use them for a short term tour,” he continued. “It’s been a very interesting eight years for me here.