Kuala Lumpur is a city steeped in rich history and traditions. Originally a small hamlet of just a few houses and shops, it stands proud as the capital of Malaysia and is home to 1.8 million people. At the heart of Kuala Lumpur lies a new community and cultural hub, REXKL. Designed within what was once the legendary Rex Theatre, which twice shut down due to fires in 1972 and again in 2002, the hub opened in September 2023 as a part of a mission to rejuvenate the theater in a forgotten part of the city.
The two-story, 60,000-square-foot building features retail shops and restaurants in the basement and a picturesque bookstore and exhibition space on the upper floor. Shin Tseng and Shin Chang, the creative entrepreneurs who helped reimagine the Rex, wanted the new space to be a unique, immersive performance venue. Featuring the original theater’s brick and exposed structure, it is now a modern, industrial marvel that hosts performers and exhibitors. With a desire for the space to captivate guests with vivid visuals and audio, the venue deployed LEA Professional amplifiers in the REXPERIENCE center, or RXP for short, within REXKL as part of its grand reopening and reinvention.
The venue management team’s broad vision for immersive exhibitions meant the new RXP AV system needed to be flexible enough to meet the most demanding, highest-quality audio needs for immersive musical and visual performances, plus more basic productions, including corporate events and DJ shows. “The multidimensional nature of the events held in the RXP venue meant we needed to recommend a system that we could scale and adapt as needed,” said Eugene Yeo, General Manager of Acoustic & Lighting System. “We’ve had a lot of success with LEA products and felt they were a perfect fit for RXP because they could provide the power, performance, and reliability needed.”
Set in a former movie theater, RXP reimagines the legacy of the Rex cinema space by bringing in a new, cutting-edge digital art experience. As the first immersive venue in Malaysia, the venue team wanted to get the details right and spent over a year planning, working with the participating visual artists, and designing the spatial audio tracks. The immersive environment includes 18 projectors mapping visual elements on the walls and floor, while the spatial audio design required that the venue be fully modeled in 3D.
Eighteen compact two-way loudspeakers, backed by four subwoofers, are strategically located throughout the RXP to provide the spatial audio listening experience. To help meet the range of audio needs, Acoustic & Lighting System chose a combination of two of LEA Professional’s Connect Series 1504D and five Connect Series 704D for the digital art experience. The 1504Ds power the subwoofers, while the 704Ds support the two-way loudspeakers. Both models include 96 kHz-capable Dante and AES67 connectivity options.
The high-power IoT-enabled four-channel 1504D provides 1,500 watts per channel into 2, 4, and 8 ohms and 70Vrms and 100Vrms. The CS1504D includes advanced DSP with 96 kHz linear phase FIR crossover filters, acoustically transparent look ahead RMS and peak limiters, 32-bit floating-point DSP with built-in sample rate converters, and two Smart Power Bridge channels.
Conversely, each 4-channel 704D delivers 700 watts per channel. It supports high-Z (70V or 100V) and low-Z selectable by channel, giving the venue much-needed design flexibility and enough additional capacity to support future expansion efforts.
The Connect Series delivers an industry-first professional amplifier family to feature cloud connectivity, a revolutionary advancement and a significant benefit for anyone maintaining the systems. With LEA Cloud, AV teams can remotely control and monitor the amplifiers regardless of the location or time of day. Whether from within the REXKL or on another continent, controlling the Connect Series amplifiers from afar helps teams work more efficiently, reducing travel and saving time and money.
For larger, mixed-used spaces like REXKL, LEA Professional’s SharkWare software allows integrators to work both in offline design and online mode on a systems amplification configuration to ensure a more seamless, accessible, and flexible user experience with all LEA Professional Connect Series amplifiers. Available for both Windows and Mac, Sharkware includes features such as amplifier grouping, offline design, granular user access control levels, locked speaker tunings, and a graphical EQ. Sharkware also incorporates key features from LEA Professional’s existing WebUI tool, allowing users to monitor the status of every amplifier connected to the network and the status and performance of individual channels. In addition, the software allows users to view and adjust channel settings such as input settings, signal generator, crossover, equalizer, limiter, and load monitoring for all LEA Professional Connect Series amplifiers.
The REXKL has become a destination point for locals and a must-see spot for tourists. It’s also a state-of-the-art performance center delivering the highest quality audio performance for every event. “Since opening, the “Other World” immersive experience in the RXP has really put the audio system to the test,” said Brian Pickowitz, VP of Marketing at LEA Professional. “Creating an art exhibition that sparks discovery and inspiration among art lovers and bringing the venue back to life in such a unique way is incredibly meaningful and one we were proud to be part of.”
