Four L-Acoustics L2D Are Making Every Seat Sound Better at Highmark Mann with World-Class, Hi-Fi Audio Experience

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania – August 2026 – Philadelphia’s Highmark Mann Center for the Performing Arts opened in America’s Bicentennial year as the summer home of The Philadelphia Orchestra, which still performs there today. Now, in the country’s semiquincentennial year, Highmark Mann celebrates its 50th, having hosted many of the world’s top entertainers since 1976, including Ella Fitzgerald, Yo-Yo Ma, James Taylor, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Jimmy Buffett, Phish, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Ray Charles, The Roots, Boyz II Men, Ed Sheeran, Hilary Duff, and many more. One of Philadelphia’s premiere outdoor venues and one of the largest nonprofit open-air music centers in the United States, drawing more than 400,000 visitors a year to Fairmount Park, it has spent the run-up to that anniversary rebuilding: a new backstage facility, the Skyline Stage, a completely reimagined Plaza and entry experience, and now an L-Acoustics L2D system for the two thirds of its audience who sit outside the TD Pavilion on the venue’s Great Lawn.

When Evan Rogers joined Highmark Mann five years ago as Vice President and General Manager, he set about understanding the legacy sound system properly before replacing it. He audited the loudspeakers and the rigging and went back through what previous operators had specified, then went outside the building for the rest of his answers: interviewing touring crews as they passed through, calling peer amphitheaters around the country to ask what they had installed and what they would do differently, and putting the same questions to Live Nation and AEG. He also watched what the tours carried, and noted acts bringing in their own main stage rigs for the pavilion audience. What he kept finding was L-Acoustics: a great deal of K2, and a growing appetite for K3 and L2. With nine out of ten incoming productions asking for the brand, calling local L-Acoustics Certified Provider Bauder Audio Systems was a straightforward decision.

By this summer season’s conclusion, artists and groups such as The Philadelphia Orchestra, BalletX, The Philly Pops, Bleachers, The Strokes, The Red Clay Strays, Three Pianos, Jack Johnson, Hilary Duff, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Sara McLachlan, Neil Young, Willie Nelson, and Zac Brown will have used the new audio system at Highmark Mann.

Summer on the Lawn Sets the Brief for L Series

‍Highmark Mann seats 4,500 under the roof of its TD Pavilion. Beyond the roofline, 2,000 more sit in the fixed seats of the Connelly Terrace, and past the terrace the Great Lawn holds over 6,000. In an American summer, that lawn is the point: where the concert becomes a picnic, where families come back season after season, and where the least expensive ticket in the house buys the most unhurried night of the year. Rogers wanted the sound out there to match the occasion.

“In our terrace section, the speakers that had been spec’d and designed for the venue up until now really overshot the seating section,” Rogers recalls. “I don’t think it’s uncommon to go to venues, especially amphitheaters, where there is a sense of ‘us versus them’ in terms of the experience in the house versus the experience on the lawn. We wanted to make sure that the sound experience is universally incredible for everyone, no matter their seat.”

A second constraint sat on the brief from the outset. Highmark Mann has the luxury of sitting inside Fairmount Park, but the residential Parkside neighborhood begins close behind the lawn, and on the biggest-selling shows, the venue sells tickets right up to that edge. The sound that reaches the last blanket has to stop shortly after it, which places Highmark Mann with iconic venues such as the Hollywood Bowl and Forest Hills Stadium: magnets for concert crowds precisely because they sit in the city, and obliged to control what crosses the property line.

Brian Naab, Production Manager for Bauder Audio Systems, rates the venue highly. “Highmark Mann, in general, is a good-sounding space compared to some of the newer concrete sheds,” he says. “But distance and SPL were still our main challenges.” Those challenges live in the open air past the pavilion, where there is no shell to help. Conversations about the upgrade started two years ago and, in Naab’s words, “they cranked up the conversation with the request for a demo” last summer. Bauder brought in an L Series system for three nights across two engagements in late September and early October 2025. Highmark Mann had heard enough, and installation was set for mid-May.

Four L2D, Four Existing Hang Points, One Day of Rigging

‍Four L-Acoustics L2D now fly at the back of the pavilion above the lawn, one enclosure per position. The team hung the boxes and ran cable in a single day, and Bauder Lead System Tech Craig “Junior” Kaufmann came back a few days later to tune the system.

“One of the reasons this lawn system went up so quickly is because there was an existing delay system there before, so the infrastructure for hanging these four different sources of lawn speakers was already there,” Kaufmann explains. “But the amount of sound we could fit into that pre-existing space is orders of magnitude higher now.”

The arithmetic behind that is straightforward. Four hang points were already in place and could not be multiplied, so the question was how much output four positions could deliver. A single L2D carries 20 transducers in one enclosure, four 12-inch and eight 10-inch neodymium cone drivers with eight three-inch compression drivers, run by one 16-channel LA7.16i amplified controller. Covering the same ground with conventional six-enclosure hangs would have put 24 boxes on those same four points.

Naab points to the footprint. “If I said ‘this group of four enclosures is going to cover 12,000 people tomorrow night on the lawn’, you’d say ‘no way’,” he says. “It’s crazy when you see how compact they are. L2D’s performance versus size is very impressive.”

PULS Keeps the Wavefront Coherent to the Back of the Lawn

‍L2D runs on PULS, the Progressive Ultra-Dense Line Source design that combines multiple line source elements in one enclosure and closes the gaps, in cabinetry and in air, that sit between the drivers of a conventional array. The result is that the people at the back of the lawn hear what the people at the front hear. “The wavefront stays coherent much farther away from the source than anything else on the market,” Kaufmann says.

“It still feels like you’re sitting in your living room with a hi-fi system only 10 or 12 feet away from you, even though you’re hundreds of feet away from these speakers,” he adds. “L Series was absolutely the correct choice of loudspeaker for this application.”

L2D Down-Fill Erases the Line Between the House and the Terrace

‍The Connelly Terrace had suffered most: close enough to the pavilion for the audience to feel part of the room, far enough out to fall past the old system’s coverage. L2D resolves that within a single enclosure. Its 60 degrees of progressive vertical directivity put the lower part of the box on the near field across the terrace while the upper part carries to the back of the lawn, and the bottom two modules widen horizontally from 110 to 140 degrees with cardioid behavior built in.

“First and foremost, we were able to hit that terrace very efficiently because of the splay angle and the curvature of the cabinet, and we were really able to erase that line that you feel as a guest between being inside the house and being in the terrace,” Rogers says. “L Series created a really smooth sense of transition between the two PAs.”

The first arena-scale pop production on the new system was Bleachers on June 13, fronted by Jack Antonoff, producer for Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, and Doja Cat. The main stage rig for that show was L Series as well, supplied by Bauder. Antonoff travels with a strong front-of-house engineer and the band members are audio-savvy, Kaufmann says, and they noticed the difference outside the roof. There are no subwoofers on the lawn, which makes the low-frequency result a highlight of the season: patrons on the lawn are hearing every XYZ.

Soundvision Predicted the Containment Before the First Box Went Up

‍Before anything was ordered, Bauder built a CAD model of the venue and ran the design in L-Acoustics Soundvision. Kaufmann and Naab both credit the accuracy of the prediction, which showed early that coverage would stay within the site. For a venue with neighbors this close, that was the point on which the project turned.

“We really have to be sensitive to our neighbors,” Rogers observes. “Craig and Brian at Bauder, plus Reed and Ted on our own crew, have been excellent about making sure that that’s a priority, and this L2D upgrade greatly helps with that directive.” On its biggest shows, Highmark Mann would previously bring in supplementary delay hangs to serve the back of the lawn. With L2D in place, the venue does not expect to need them.

The system is a serious investment for a nonprofit institution, and Rogers rates the process behind it as highly as the result. “L-Acoustics and Bauder have been right here with us all along during this upgrade, and it really feels like a very successful partnership,” he says. “That’s not always the case when you’re dealing with vendors that are just pushing the next sale. The most important thing is that sense of engagement, of being connected to what’s happening inside the pavilion, and our new system truly delivers that.”

For more information on Highmark Mann, visit www.highmarkmann.org. Bauder Audio Systems can be found online at www.bauderaudio.com.

Please visit L-Acoustics at www.l-acoustics.com.

About L-Acoustics

‍Since 1984, we have been continuously innovating to shape the future of sound.

Our European-designed solutions optimize Source, System, and Space—unleashing creative possibilities in content, perfecting audio technology, and harmonizing with venue acoustics to guarantee exceptional performance.

Our global team of over 1,000, with 20% dedicated to R&D, has pioneered breakthroughs like the V-DOSC line array, L-ISA immersive solutions, and the eco-conscious L Series—innovations that have both transformed our industry and transcended our auditory perceptions.

The world’s most demanding stages trust us: Adele’s Las Vegas residency, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Zaha Hadid-designed Guangzhou Opera House, and over 13,000 premium venues worldwide. We’ve earned this trust by consistently delivering extraordinary audio in every venue and any space.

We are L-Acoustics. We connect humans through the best shared sound experiences.

Photo Credit: Jordan August