NASHVILLE,
Tennessee — Nashville’s Country Radio Seminar (CRS) is an annual showcase week
for the industry where new artists and music that will be released over the
course of the year is presented to top country radio people and industry
heavyweights. This year’s CRS took place at the Nashville Convention Center,
February 27 through March 1 and wowed the more than 5,000 attendees with live
performances by Brad Paisley, Vince Gill, Darius Rucker, Gary Allan, Kellie
Pickler and many more--all heard through HARMAN’s JBL VTX Series line arrays
powered by Crown I-Tech HD amplifiers.
Live
sound for the event was provided by Franklin, Tennessee-based CTS Audio,
working with event production company DeLux Productions. CTS staff for the
event included CTS vice president Mike Taylor, front of house engineer Jon
Schwarz, monitor engineer Scott Heyniger and system techs Jeremy Bayne and Joey
Eaker.
“We’ve
supplied the sound for CRS for nine years and this is the first time we used
JBL’s VTX line arrays for the event, so we were stoked to hear what they could
do in this room,” Taylor said. CTS flew nine VTX V25 fullsize line array
elements and eight VTX S28 subwoofers on each side of the 30x40-foot stage,
complemented by four JBL VERTEC® VT4888 midsize line array elements used as delay speakers.
The
V25 speakers and S28 subwoofers were driven by 32 Crown I-Tech 12000HD amplifiers, with 16 Crown VRACK 12000HD and four VRACK 4X3500HD
complete amplifier management rack systems powering the VT4888 delay speakers.
Because there wasn’t much room for the delay amp racks, the VRACK’s
self-contained design, which houses three I-Tech 12000HD amps, an input panel and power management, proved ideal for
the application thanks to its high 27000 watts of total power (into 4 ohms)
contained in a smaller-footprint package. CTS used JBL HiQnet Performance
Manager™ software and BSS Soundweb London BLU-80 signal processors for system
control and tuning.
CTS
Audio has been a JBL VERTEC user for many years and Taylor was impressed by the VTX
line arrays. “We got a tremendous amount of headroom using the VTX, and as much
as we continue to rely on VERTEC, the improvement in clarity, coverage and power output from
these boxes was noticeable,” Taylor said. He also found the Crown amps to be an
ideal match with the VTX speakers, thanks to their built-in DSP and HiQnet
compatibility that enabled the amps to be easily and precisely tuned to get the
most out of the VTX arrays during the event.
“The
system performed flawlessly,” Taylor noted. “We didn’t have a single problem
with the audio and got a lot of compliments from the other engineers in
attendance. Even the front of house engineer at the Grand Ole Opry was raving
about how good everything sounded.”
For
more information on CTS Audio, please visit www.ctsaudio.com
Photo
Credit: Kristen England
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