Executive Profile: L-Acoustics CEO Laurent Vassié Talks Madonna In Rio, Adele Vegas Residency

The concert industry is simultaneously primitive and high-tech, a business where relationships go farther than bells and whistles, but where technology can make business more efficient and take production value to new heights. The world of pro audio has become similarly high-tech, where heavy machinery is being wielded by nimble software to make artists’ vision come true — and make roadies’ truckloads lighter in the process.

Few people understand the overall ecosystem better than Laurent Vaissié, who joined concert L-Acoustics, a pioneer in pro audio that largely developed the modern line array system, in 2011 to lead the French company’s North American expansion. Firmly entrenched as one of a handful of major manufacturers producing loudspeakers and amplifiers fit for major concert tours, festivals and mammoth outdoor performances like Madonna’s recent record-breaker in Rio de Janeiro, Vaissié says the overall industry looks strong halfway through 2024, and all-time highs for the company itself.

Enduring the COVID shutdown and introducing new products including the L-ISA immersive audio technology, Vassié, named CEO in 2019, oversees L-Acoustics as a touring mainstay while seeing opportunity in new venues, developing markets and in sports, where venues and teams look to enhance production value and the fan experience. Vaissié took some time to speak with Pollstar for this executive profile interview, buzzing after the Madonna performance and just one day after seeing the Tony Award for Best Sound Design for a Musical go to Broadway production “The Outsiders,” the first to use the new L2 system by L-Acoustics.

This interview is part of Pollstar’s latest Concert Support Services Directory, which can be purchased here.

Pollstar: What’s your outlook for 2024 considering the record-breaking touring business seen last year and accelerated activity post-pandemic?
Twenty-four so far is a great year for us and I think for the industry in general. Our business is not only in touring, but that’s where our DNA is coming from. We started in touring and the rental and about twice the size that we were pre-COVID. A lot of that has been driven by the artists going out on tour, a lot of festivals coming out and just the appetite of everybody wanting those shared emotions and shared experiences again. Last year was our biggest year ever for K1, which is a flagship product for stadium and arena tours and festivals. That’s a product that was launched in 2008, so that tells you the strength of the touring market right now.

How closely do ticket sales correlate with your overall business?
We’ve found a pretty good correlation between the ticket sales and our activity in the touring world. Fifty percent of the major festivals use our system and we’re still the No. 1 brand on tours, if you look at the Top 100 tours. We manufacture and specify the systems, but we don’t provide the systems to the production and the artists. We work with a network of rental providers that then deploy the systems for the artist, so we’re one step removed from artist’s standard ticket sales. (Touring) seems to have slowed down a little bit compared to the past two years, but it’s still growing. One thing that I find interesting is that of the Top 50 tours, 50% of the acts are international, 50% more this year than previous years. So it’s not only the English and U.S. markets, but K-pop, Latin artists. Asia is money to get there. But overall I think the industry is still pretty healthy. I would say we don’t see a slow-down. We don’t see maybe the double-digit growth that we’ve seen in touring coming out of COVID, but I believe that ‘24 and ‘25 should still see some growth for us here.

You recently launched the new L-Series system at an event at the Hollywood Bowl. What can you share about that product?
 It’s been a great, positive surprise for us. We launched it in April 2023 and it is a bit of a departure from the traditional line array, because we have eliminated the articulation between the boxes. Based on the analysis of thousands of designs, we came up with the optimum mechanical shape, which then is fine tuned with software and electronics. The response has been amazing. The clients got it right away. It is 30% lighter weight, and removing the articulation makes it a lot more efficient. We’ve had tours deploying the system on three continents now. It’s been on Broadway with L-ISA and actually I have to mention that because last night, Cody Spencer won the Tony Award for Best Sound Design for a Musical for ‘The Outsiders.” It was the first time that L2 was deployed on a musical. “Annie” was with L-ISA as well. So it was a really big night.

What it means in terms of numbers is we have pretty much sold out for this year, and we have a backlog for until roughly middle of next year at this point to deploy as well. We’re also seeing a lot of requests in terms of permanent installation. It’s a very compact system. It’s also high SPL, has both horizontal and vertical control of the directivity. The design is very pleasing also; it looks great architecturally. So we’re seeing a lot of interest and when combined with L-ISA, it makes for a very clean stage, very easy to deploy and very easy to control. It’s not a system that is designed for the stadium tours. It has a range of application from about 1,000 to up to maybe 20,000-seat arenas depending on the configuration. It’s not a system that is going to replace a K1 or even a large K2 deployment, but in a range of application from the theater to medium-sized arenas, nothing can touch it in terms of performance and efficiency.

Immersive audio is a big trend in live music right now. How does L-ISA technology fit into the company’s overall product line?
L-ISA as a technology can be used with any of our loudspeakers, from the smaller coaxial all the way to K1. It’s a way to deploy the arrays in a manner that connects the audience to the performer because we can place the sound anywhere across the stage or around the audience. The advantage of deploying L-ISA technology with the L series is that these loudspeakers are very small. They’re very compact, they’re narrow and they’re powerful. So by eliminating the weight and eliminating the volume, it’s much easier to deploy multiple arrays across the stage. Also because we remove the articulation, it goes up and down very fast. What we proved now is that it does take about the same amount of labor and time to deploy five arrays of L2 across the stage for more of an immersive L-ISA configuration than it would for a traditional left-right array of K2 or other traditional line array. Adele is using L-ISA technology for her residency, she is using the K2 system at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace. It’s deployed in the configuration that is multiple arrays across the stage. That allows the engineers to move the sound and match the sound to what’s going on — for the specific song, from really intimate to to really wide and really explosive and very dynamic.

I’m sure that makes for a very high-quality experience in that controlled kind of indoor setting. How about outdoors? L-Acoustics was in use for Madonna’s record-breaking Rio performance that attracted 1.6 million people.
Line arrays have really enabled that kind of revolution because the line array is what allows the sound to really propagate all the way to the back. It’s very long distances, talking about hundreds of feet. You mentioned Madonna, that was the largest concert any artist has ever done as a single event. There were 1.6 million people connected through the shared experience of sound. We had 600 enclosures there, 600 loudspeakers, 200 amplifiers. The military actually came out and told the crew, “Guys, this is a no-fail scenario, because if the concert is canceled or the system fails, we’re going to have a riot with 1 million people. So, don’t screw it up,” basically (laughs). Reliability was a big deal. It required preparation in advance, because it was such a large system, you can’t plan that on site. We used our 3D modeling software to cover the entire beach of Copacabana and make sure the sound was covered. The amplifiers were on site a few days before. It’s a tough, difficult environment, with sea salt and things like that. The front of house engineer, Burton Ishmael, was the mastermind behind that with Andy Fitton and Frank Peoples. We sent two of our engineers who helped the crew from Clair Global and Gabisom who deployed the system. The discussion started months in advance in terms of the concept, but at eight to 12 weeks away things really start to get into motion, because you have to source the equipment. One of the reasons L-Acoustics is usually picked for these types of events is the availability of the system, the predictability and reliability of the system. Clair Global and the team reached out to Gabisom in Brazil to find the equipment, which was already no small feat. Then, a few weeks before, discussions happen in terms of validating the designs, making sure all the modeling is done. It’s a five-day load-in, so it takes five days to load in the equipment and install all the systems on the beach. Then it’s a one-day calibration. Something really interesting is that the temperature on the beach went from 105 degrees during the day to about 60 degrees at night, so huge temperature shifts, huge impact of the wind and the humidity. All this has to be taken into account. But this is where you see the evolution of the technology for live concerts. We now have automated tools that take all this information into account and will adapt the system to compensate for that.

There’s been a raft of new venues popping up across the world. Are more going for high-quality permanent installs?
Artists and production used to carry their own PA and sound equipment and lighting equipment when they were doing smaller tours. I would say most small- to medium-sized venues, up to 4,000 or 5,000 seats, are now equipped with equipment that is rider friendly, meaning that it’s accepted by the artist and is flexible in terms of the use, because most of the venues have gone multi-use. Versatility is really important for those venues when they go from a concert to corporate event to an awards show. Reliability and performance really is what those venues look for. That trend started in the club and medium-sized theater, and we’re starting to see it also coming up a little bit into the arenas. That’s interesting because that merges with another market, the sports market. Those arenas and stadiums, their first tenant is a sports team, so what we’re seeing is a lot more requests for systems that can handle sports, entertainment, impact intelligibility getting the fans excited about what’s going on. It’s becoming more and more of a show, especially in the NBA and hockey, but more and more so in football. That merges to the concert, because a lot of those arenas and venues now are thinking, “Well, I want a system that can do both.” I want a system I can use on Sunday for football, but when I have an A-list artist coming in, like Foo Fighters or Depeche Mode, I want to be able to have a system that I can use at least for the higher seats, so the production doesn’t have to bring it. Those venues can now rent the system to the production, and everybody’s happy because it’s also less labor, less work to get all this gear in the air. It’s also more sustainable.

The business continues to trend global, with more tours hitting more continents and new, modern venues being built to match. How does L-Acoustics fit in globally?
When a tour goes to Latin America or to Asia, usually there’s a local provider that provides the system to that arena. So we see that with a lot of the Movistar arenas, the sponsor of the arenas in Latin America, but also AEG opened a dedicated concert arena in Thailand, and that has a permanent system. Usually when tours go to those regions, they don’t carry all the staging, all the production that they usually carry in Europe or North America. So merging a sound system or lighting system that’s local with the set and the scenery sometimes can be complicated. But I do believe that as an industry, we can do better in terms of standardization and providing local sourcing. The impact of touring on the environment is non-negligible. A lot more artists are sensitive to this point and I do think t here are solutions that could be implemented if we all put our heads together without hindering or limiting the creativity of the artist. Trucks are one thing, but sometimes systems actually go on 747s and across the ocean. What we’ve done with L-Acoustics and our network of providers is actually almost completely remove that aspect, because you can find the systems and the standards both in the Americas, in Europe or in Asia. Today, most of the productions do not carry PA across the ocean. They will find it and source it locally and then truck it around the region, because that’s still the most efficient. That’s already a pretty big step. Like many aspects of concert production, software plays a big part in what might have previously been considered a simple or primitive aspect of the business — audio. More and more software is becoming a really big part of sound. If you look at the life cycles of those products, like I mentioned K1, which was launched in 2008 and still is No. 1 on the riders. If you look at that lifespan and the amount of software updates that have happened during that time, it’s almost a completely different system (today). The capabilities in software and the capabilities in electronics that are available today were not available 10 or 15 years ago. That’s becoming an important part of everything we do. The L-Series is a great example for this, because it has its dedicated amplification platform, 16 channels of high resolution, control of each of the components in the loudspeaker. Without the software, we could actually not deploy that system, because you have to finetune the coverage through software to match the sound coverage to the audience.

How do you ensure the artist community knows what is now possible through audio rather than just viewing it as another expense for the tour?
Over the past 10 years, the biggest revolution for us as audio professionals is that with technologies like L-ISA, audio has become a creative tool. It used to be that the artists did not really need to care much about sound. They just relied on the engineers and their crew making sure it’s going to sound great. Now, the questions that are more on the creative side to the musical director, to the artist, in terms of “How do you want your sound to be heard? Do you want a dynamic? Do you want sound to move around? Are there any instruments that you want to put forward more than than others?” Those questions, as manufacturers, we can’t answer them. We are providing the platform, the canvas, but we are having those discussions more and more now in production. Our clients have those discussions with the artist about, “Hey, sound can also be creative and can really enhance your show, and you should care about or at least tell us how you want it.” We’ve seen this with Adele in her residency. We’ve seen it with Katy Perry and Carrie Underwood with their residencies. The level of engagement depends on the artist, of course. Some are very heavy into technology. We work with Justin Vernon from Bon Iver, for example, who is really heavy into technology and loved digging into L-ISA and all the technology. And Adele, who will do an A/B between two types of systems and say “I love this one” and then she’ll rely on her team to make it happen. Those discussions are in a way the most challenging for us because we need all the creatives and all the musical directors and the artists to know that those platforms and those technologies are available. It’s not easy actually to increase awareness about it.

Artists lead the way creatively, but venues seem to be making new things possible on stage, such as the Sphere in Las Vegas and the aforementioned residency shows.
I’m really impressed by what they’ve done with the Sphere and the concept. We have to give it to them in terms of vision and creating a $2 billion concert venue. It’s everyone’s dream, if budget was no concern. It’s showing a really interesting proof of concept. We may have done it a little bit differently, but the concept is really powerful and gets everybody’s attention about, “Hey, this is what a purpose-built venue can do in terms of experience.” We’ve seen this in other parts of the world. We worked on the ABBA Voyage show in London, also a purpose-built venue with avatars, semi-virtually, because there’s a live band and it really feels real. I do believe that this is part of the future of entertainment and concerts, of shared experiences. Sound can really help make that experience real. At the end of the day, we go to concerts for the music. So I do believe this is a trend that is here to last. I’m quite encouraged that more and more of the venue developers are starting to reach out early in terms of the full acoustics and design of the venue. We’re seeing more of those venues around — not quite to the point of designing a Sphere-like venue — but the notion of asking ourselves, you have movie theaters, purpose-built for movies and there’s a standard, but there’s no such a thing for concerts, right? You can hear Adele in two different arenas across the U.S. and you will have two different experiences. It’s not the artist, it’s not the engineer, it’s not the system. It’s really the venue. Could we standardize and get to a point where we increase the quality of the new experience and make it more consistent so everybody can really enjoy the same shared experience? That is a goal I think that we can shoot for.