NORTHRIDGE, California – The 2-day Orion Music + More Festival, held at Bader Field
in Atlantic City, New Jersey, featured a host of major acts on four stages
including Arctic Monkeys, Avenged Sevenfold, Cage the Elephant, Modest Mouse,
Baroness and more than 20 other bands, capped by Metallica performing their
pivotal Ride the Lightning and Metallic albums in their entirety on
successive nights. More than 64,000 attendees enjoyed hearing their favorite bands
through a HARMAN sound system that included JBL VTX and VerTec® line
arrays, Crown I-Tech HD amplifiers and Soundcraft Vi6 digital mixing consoles.
Maryland
Sound International, a Baltimore-based production company with more than 45
years experience in sound contracting for major events, provided the audio
system for one of the main stages. The loudspeaker complement included 14 of
JBL’s new VTX V25 line array elements and 12 JBL VerTec VT4888 midsize line array elements at each side of the
stage, along with 12 VT4880A fullsize arrayable subwoofers. Six VerTec VT4889 fullsize line array elements were deployed at each
side of the stage for out fill, and four VT4887’s were used for front fill.
In
addition, VT4889 line array elements and VT4888’s were utilized as stage
monitors, with a pair of VT4881A arrayable subwoofers placed around the drums
to provide added low-end monitoring. The loudspeakers were driven by 80 Crown Crown
IT12000HD power amplifiers—70 for the main system and 10 to power the onstage monitor
speakers. Two Soundcraft Vi6 digital consoles handled front of house and
monitor mixing. Leiter and the MSI crew employed HARMAN HiQnet Performance
Manager™ software to set up and tune the system.
“The
Orion Music + More Festival gave us a great opportunity to use the new JBL V25
line arrays in a large-concert outdoor setting,” said Jeremiah Leiter, General
Manager at Maryland Sound. “We purchased the V25’s because we’re committed to
providing the very best when the audience matters—when they’re listening to the
bands they’re passionate about.”
Like most multi-band
festival situations, there wasn’t a lot of time for setup between bands, which
made the superior sound quality of the V25 and the VerTec line arrays a key factor. “Most of the bands only had time
to do a line check and not a full sound check, so we couldn’t go crazy with
tweaking EQs and settings for every vocalist and instrument,” Leiter continued.
“Although most of the bands only needed about 20 inputs and that helped speed
up set changes, still, the line arrays had a flat-enough response that we were
able to quickly dial in the sound of every band and performer without having to
make radical adjustments at the board.”
Leiter
also noted the improved installation features of the VTX Series. “The V25 is
much easier to move into place and rig,” he said. “The dolly system used for
transport is more secure and the built-in rigging hardware makes it faster and
smpler to fly the speakers. Also, Performance Manager almost makes configuring
the system idiot-proof.”
In
addition, a number of different front of house engineers used the Soundcraft
Vi6 consoles and they were all very comfortable with the board. “In fact, some
of them brought their own Vi6 file settings on a USB drive and loaded them in,”
Leiter noted.
“We
were all pretty knocked out by the sound,” Leiter said. “The bands were
extremely pleased. Also, a lot of other audio professionals came around to our
stage to check it out. We really created a buzz—with no exaggeration, it only
took about 15 minutes after the first act went on for people to come by to
listen and ask about why our stage sounded so good.”
For more information
about Maryland Sound International please visit www.marylandsound.com.
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