Renkus-Heinz's IC Live Gen5 dual arrays are delivering clear speech and music to The Art of Living Centre, an urban oasis in the heart of Los Angeles.
Part of a global movement dedicated to reducing stress and fostering wellbeing through meditation, breathwork, and community service, the centre serves as a hub for personal growth and community connection. As one of the world’s most prominent Art of Living centres, this Los Angeles site offers wellbeing programs, volunteering and community events. The building is an early 20th-century architectural gem, featuring what was once the world’s largest concrete poured dome, extensive glasswork, and a historic pipe organ. This creates a visually breathtaking yet highly acoustically challenging environment.
The vast volume, reflective surfaces and historic character of the building’s central sanctuary make it an inspiring place to gather but difficult to deliver clear, intelligible sound. To address this challenge, the Art of Living partnered with Menlo Scientific Acoustic’s principal consultant, Neil Shaw, FASA, FAES, and Electronic Technology integrator, Russ DuBrow, to design and install a new audio system capable of delivering speech intelligibility and musical clarity while respecting the historic architecture. Their solution: Renkus-Heinz IC Live Gen5 ICL-F-DUAL digitally steerable arrays, supported by a pair of SA112 subwoofers.
As well as speech and meditative programming, the sanctuary also hosts occasional musical performances that demand higher sound pressure levels. This diverse program material was a key reason for selecting IC Live—the system’s ability to deliver both high output and precision makes it uniquely suited to support everything from spoken word and chanting to louder musical elements, including a full band with keyboards, guitars and bongo drums, without sacrificing any clarity.
With limited acoustic treatment in the room and no ability to add more without compromising the architecture, the two ICL-F-DUALs discreetly mounted on the front columns deliver controlled, focused coverage to the seating areas.
To complete the audio system, two SA112 subwoofers were installed in the front of the stage, placed directly on the floor to prevent unwanted resonance and low-frequency absorption. A niche was constructed for the sub-woofer enclosures to mitigate the energy from the enclosures leaking underneath the platform, resulting in compact but impactful low-frequency performance. To complete the integration, a custom metal grille and frame were shaped to match the curve of the stage. A new Allen & Heath GX4816 digital mixer and Cat5/6 extender with D-snake DT168 Stage Box were added later, providing a significant upgrade to signal routing and overall system control.