'L-Acoustics was the only option': Inside Bruno Mars' Pinky Ring

The brainchild of global pop star Bruno Mars, The Pinky Ring is a sleek and stylish live music venue and cocktail bar located in Las Vegas’s Bellagio Resort & Casino. Featuring an L-Acoustics A series sound system, the space has been designed to bring world-class, cutting-edge sound to an intimate, old school setting. Headliner spoke to former Mars systems engineer and current L-Acoustics applications engineer Sully Sullivan to find out how the vision of the artist became a reality.

Having shown himself to be a top tier Vegas draw via his staggering nine-year residency run at Dolby Live at Park MGM – home to an L-Acoustics K2 sound system – Bruno Mars has added further still the mark he has left on the city in the form of The Pinky Ring. An intimate 200-capacity new venue inside the Bellagio Resort & Casino has been designed in the image of the artist himself, boasting a glamorous cocktail bar chic and a dynamism that lends itself to both up-and-coming acts and stadium-filling superstars alike. The venue’s grand opening was marked with a two-week residency by Mars and his group The Hooligans.

Crucial to the success of the venue was an audio system that could match its vibrant aesthetic. Integrated by PSX, the concert sound system was specified by the acoustics firm Designtechnik, assisted by Sullivan, to assist with the design. Using L-Acoustics Soundvision acoustical modelling software, they created a system featuring ceiling-flown main arrays of one A15i Focus over one A15i Wide above each side of the stage. For low end, four Syva Sub enclosures are horizontally lined and pocketed in concrete under the deck and flanked by a single end-stacked KS28 sub on either side, each topped with a coaxial X12 for front-fill. A pair of X15 HiQ wedges sit in front of the stage for monitoring.

The back of The Pinky Ring’s ‘living room’ and dance floor area sports three ceiling-mounted X8 delay speakers paired with two low-profile SB10i subs, with additional X8 and SB10i deployed throughout the two primary VIP areas. The rear seating banquettes feature a combined total of six X4i and three SB10i to allow those in the most expensive seats to experience the most intimate of shows. Six ultra-compact X4i speakers plus four SB6i subs are flown overhead along the main entrance hallway, which is lined with Grammy Awards. Power for the Syva Subs and KS28 are provided by an LA12X amplified controller, with the rest of the setup driven by an LA7.16i. An L-Acoustics P1 on the front end of the system handles Milan-AVB conversion.

“Bruno and I had a conversation as to what the vibe should be,” Sullivan tells Headliner, explaining the origins of the project. “We chatted and he gave me the information as to what he wanted in the venue, which was effectively this upscale venue that was at the same time intimate and sounded fantastic. That was the idea we went with, and we translated that to the integrators. And when it came to sound, there was never any other option beyond L-Acoustics.”

For Sullivan, the L-Acoustics Soundvision software proved invaluable in achieving a setup that could deliver premium sound without compromising the visual signature of the space.

“The L-acoustics software and the whole ecosystem itself from top to bottom is something I was very familiar with,” he continues. “And it was a favourite of the crew already. We knew L-Acoustics would get the job done. The integration of Soundvision was seamless. I was able to give Bruno a 3D flythrough representation of what the venue would look like using Soundvision. That was key in getting him to understand what the system would look and feel like. And we could of course map it acoustically very easily.

“All in all, it’s a very stable ecosystem and a very high-quality box. A very neutral box. Because of the size of the venue, I decided that the A series was the way to go. We spent quite a lot of time looking at the acoustic signature of the space - we weren’t just turning up and punching energy into the room. We had two acousticians specifically to review the site to make sure there wouldn’t be anything strange coming back at the stage or reverberating around the space unnecessarily. And Bruno was fantastically happy with the outcome.”

Sullivan also points out that the system is purposefully over-delayed to the front of the room to foster visual fusion, as per Mars’s request.

“Everything is over-delayed but filled in so that the image is perceived as coming directly from the stage,” he elaborates. “For example, the under-banquette speakers are dialled down almost 10 dB; they’re primarily used to pull the image, rather than to be impactful. It’s a subtle effect and the only way to realise that they’re doing something is to shut everything off back there, at which point it sounds really flat and empty. But when you turn them on, the sound suddenly feels nice and round and like it’s coming straight off the stage.”

For freelance engineer Brandon Andreasen, who has mixed The Hooligans at the intimate, 200-capacity space, The Pinky Ring has proved to be an overwhelming success, delighting everyone from performers and audiences, to the engineers and technicians operating behind the scenes.

“Music is undoubtedly at the heart of The Pinky Ring experience,” he concludes. “When Bruno gets onstage, as he’s still known to do from time to time, the screaming crowd can clock in at over 100 dBA, so we needed a speaker system that could compete with that while still preserving the fidelity and nuance of the performance. I’m so impressed by the amount of power that such a small L-Acoustics A15i array can produce; I feel like we get an arena-sized sound out of the discrete two-box arrays that we have here at The Pinky Ring.”