Sid the Cat Auditorium Brings Concert-Grade Sound to South Pasadena Neighborhood with L-Acoustics A Series

For more than a decade, independent concert promoter Sid the Cat Presents has organized as many as 300 shows a year at more than 70 venues across the Los Angeles area. Known for spotting emerging talent early, the promoter helped acts like Big Thief, boygenius, Phoebe Bridgers, Bright Eyes, Mac DeMarco, and Ty Segall break big by giving them a crucial showcase in a key music market. And now, after a 10-year journey, Sid the Cat has a permanent home, Sid the Cat Auditorium, housed in a meticulously restored former elementary school in South Pasadena and outfitted with an L-Acoustics A Series concert sound system installed by RAT Sound Systems of Camarillo, California.

Kyle Wilkerson and Brandon Gonzalez, Sid the Cat’s co-founders, scouted approximately 150 locations across the Los Angeles area over eight years, from churches and mortuaries to old bars and theaters. They found their match in the former South Pasadena Elementary School, originally built in 1885, reconstructed in 1928, and decommissioned as a school in 1979. The 500-capacity auditorium underwent a three-year restoration, including rediscovered ceiling murals by WPA artist Lucile Lloyd—the only four of her works that survive at the site.

The venue opened in late November last year, part of a downtown cultural revival, and serves the San Gabriel Valley, which hasn’t seen a new room of this size in over 40 years. The auditorium’s 35-by-21-foot proscenium stage features a truck loading dock connecting directly to the rear, plus a bar area that hosts DJs nightly, even when there are no main shows scheduled.

A10i Delivers Rider-Friendly Performance in Rectangular Room

The revamped space’s new left and right loudspeaker hangs comprise three L-Acoustics A10i Focus per side over a single A10i Wide, while a center-hung coaxial X15 HiQ provides fill at the downstage lip. Four KS21 subwoofers are positioned beneath the stage, two per side, and six coaxial X12 speakers are available onstage for monitoring. The entire rig is powered by LA4X amplified controllers for the mains, subs, and monitors. The loudspeaker setup has been integrated with a 64-channel Allen & Heath Avantis mixing console that handles both FOH and monitor duties.

“We’ve done shows in so many different rooms and used so many different systems, but all of our favorite spaces use L-Acoustics, so that’s what we wanted for our own venue,” Wilkerson comments. Over the years, Sid the Cat Presents has promoted shows at venues of all sizes, from the 17,500-capacity Hollywood Bowl, which has long featured an L-Acoustics rig, to the city’s most intimate spaces. “We were also looking for equipment that’s proven, rider-friendly, and bands will respect, so that was a big part of our choice, too.”

The promoters have a lengthy working relationship with the team at RAT Sound. “They’ve been amazing,” Wilkerson reports. “Dave Rat was somebody we wanted to work with for a really long time. Eight-plus years back, a friend introduced me to him, and he’s a wizard when it comes to live sound. When we first walked Dave and his team [Adam Figueroa and Greg Binkard] through the space, he told us this room was going to sound really good. That gave us tremendous reassurance even before we had booked our first show.”

While Dave Rat’s expertise and Soundvision modeling assured the team that the system would deliver exceptional sound to the audience, how it sounded onstage for the artists remained to be proven in real-world conditions. The L-Acoustics X12 monitor system received an enthusiastic endorsement soon after opening. Bright Eyes was among the first performers, and band founder Conor Oberst, who tends to not wear in-ear monitors, provided memorable feedback. “We knew it sounded really good out in the house,” Wilkerson says. “Conor usually struggles to hear himself through his floor wedges, so hearing him say he could hear perfectly on our stage was a huge compliment.”

“When it comes to being a rider-friendly venue that wants all its artists to be happy, there’s no easier choice than going with L-Acoustics,” says Adam Figueroa, RAT Sound Systems Department Head, Sales and Installations. “And because it’s a standard rectangular room with some nice acoustical treatments that we put in, it’s just a good, old-fashioned, straightforward A Series rig that sounds great, with robust Milan-AVB networking and AES for fallback.”

Sound Containment Strategy Maintains Good Neighbor Relations

With the new venue located in the heart of a residential area—in fact, Phoebe Bridgers grew up just a few streets away—the team was careful to contain the sound within the auditorium. “We ran sound studies inside and outside the venue,” Gonzalez says, “and we controlled the sound to keep it inside the space. I think the perception is that we just want to be loud and blow the neighborhood out, but our goal is for the room to sound good and clear, for artists to like the sound onstage, and for the fans to have a great sounding experience as well. It has always been about creating the best environment for both the artists and fans.”

Because the building is deemed historic, the team couldn’t change out the original window frames. “Dave Rat came up with a system to plug the windows to mitigate the noise that also maintains the integrity of the space’s design, and then we added curtains and sound baffling,” Gonzalez continues. “That helped preserve our relationship with our neighbors.”

Having experienced inferior sound systems at some of the spaces that they’ve booked in the past, Sid the Cat’s owners knew that their own venue needed to be top-notch. “For us to open this space, it was important that we invest in a quality sound system that we felt confident about,” Gonzalez says, “so that when Kyle books a huge band, or bands that we respect, it will function properly.”

The system has quickly proven its versatility across the venue’s diverse programming. “We’ve already done multiple shows here in the room, and everybody’s been blown away by what they’ve been hearing,” Gonzalez reports. “We did a really quiet show with Jonathan Richman, and people commented that the clarity was so nice. And we’ve also had shoegaze bands that have tested the limits on how loud it can get in there, and it’s all been really great.”