Indoor restaurant chooses d&b audiotechnik for outdoor concert venue

Number Thirty-Eight in Denver is taking its indoor bar and restaurant outdoors. Co-owners Spencer Fronk and Andrew Palmquist, both Denver natives have been planning the expansive indoor-outdoor concept since long before the pandemic began yet have pivoted their approach to fit perfectly—and safely—with the times.

Even with winter approaching, Fronk and Palmquist are enthusiastic about opening Number Thirty Eight right now. “We want this to be Denver’s après destination,” says Fronk. “We’re natives and know well how much Coloradans like to be outdoors. We hope people will bundle up; in fact, we can’t wait for the first show when it’s snowing.”

Concertgoers will experience a thoughtfully planned health and safety process at Number Thirty Eight, from wrist bands handed out upon entry that will support contact tracing and touchless ordering and payment to the spacing of the myriad seating arrangements. A maximum of 175 guests will be allowed into the enormous space—12,000 square feet inside, 18,000 square feet outside—instead of its normal-times capacity of 1,000. Of course, masks are mandatory when not seated.

To take this outdoor approach to the next level, Number Thirty Eight hired Brown Note Productions of Thornton, CO with the audio and lighting approach to their plan. “Our client approached us to do a complete audio and lighting design for the outdoor venue, so we’ve been involved from the beginning of the project,” states Zach Richards, Director or Integration, Brown Note Productions. “Their concept is to have a performance space capable of accommodating local, regional and national artists, and want to offer all artists and fans a really premier quality system unlike many typical outdoor venues of its size. d&b became an obvious choice for the venue based on the criteria. For the local artist, they needed the system to be extremely easy to operate so we utilized the Q-SYS platform (including the d&b plugin module for Q-SYS) to provide a very easy-to-use mixer for these instances. Of course, the d&b system also has direct inputs for other consoles that regional touring artists may bring along and so they can use the Q-SYS plugin to make this change providing a direct input path to the d&b amplifiers. For larger touring artists, we did all of the necessary infrastructure specifications to allow for larger systems to be deployed if necessary.”

Brown Note specified the weatherized variant of the 24S point source loudspeaker for the main left/right channels; because of the dipole behavior; always necessary to have great pattern control in an outdoor venue to keep sound where it is needed. A weatherized d&b 10S is used as a center fill designed to be utilized when larger systems are brought in for touring artists. There is a single weatherized 21S subwoofer in a custom fabricated enclosure providing consistent low frequency coverage throughout the venue. “With Number Thirty Eight’s directive to provide premier sound quality to the artists as well, the monitor package features d&b Max2 wedges.

“We designed the sound and lighting system at Number Thirty Eight to be plug and play for our musicians,” adds Fronk. “The stage at Number Thirty Eight is both state of the art and accessible — any musician can plug into our systems and perform without needing to bring additional production equipment. We are hyper-focused on Number Thirty Eight being a platform for musicians from across Colorado.”

Richards also noted that despite the pandemic, and thanks to an extremely dedicated and persistent team at Number Thirty Eight, “we’re all proud to have successfully completed this project in September, in time for a handful of shows before the Colorado winter sets in.”

The d&b configuration includes 2 x 24S-D loudspeaker, 1 x 10S-D, 1 x 21S Subwoofer, 1x 30 D installation amplifier, 4 x MAX2 Monitor, NL4, and 1 x 10D installation amplifier.

Brown Note specified a versatile lighting package that features Chauvet Professional IP rated fixtures including COLORdash Par-Hex 12’s and 7’s. The lighting system can be controlled via a ChamSys Quick 10 lighting console or from the Q-SYS touch panel triggering presets from an Interactive Technologies Cue Server.