Ruby Diamond Concert Hall has been the beating heart of Florida State University’s College of Music since 1911. Acting as Tallahassee’s primary performing arts venue, it seats over 1,100 and hosts everything from full opera, touring artists, and ballet productions to graduation ceremonies, academic lectures, and classical concerts. That breadth of programming is precisely what made its sound reinforcement challenge so complex: the PA had to be powerful enough to serve amplified productions yet compact enough to retract completely out of sight into the stage’s acoustical shell when acoustic performances required an unobstructed stage and acoustic sound. As FSU prepared for its 2025-26 school year, a new L-Acoustics K3i system was installed to solve both problems at once.
“The theater is used for a lot of different types of productions,” explains Ruby Diamond’s Head Audio Specialist Mike Shapiro. “We needed a top-tier, rider friendly system that would deliver powerful, impactful performances for our amplified shows, but that same system also had to have the ability to be raised through our reflective acoustic shell, out of the way, for acapella, classical acoustic, and other non-amplified shows. The L-Acoustics K3i checked every box.”
The installation was carried out by Clark, an Atlanta-based integrator and L-Acoustics Certified Provider for installations (CPi), working from a system design modeled in L-Acoustics Soundvision software.
A Modern PA for a Hall with History…