July 4th Show

Discussions about the use and operation of SAC (Software Audio Console)

July 4th Show

Postby randyhyde » Fri Jul 06, 2012 12:20 pm

July 4th I did my biggest show ever (between 5,000 and 10,000 people) at the "Town of Apple Valley's Freedom Fest"
Two bands ("Phoenix Rising", a local classic rock band, and "Southbound", a Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute band), local "idol" singers, patriotic singers, announcements, simulcast (for fireworks), etc.

SAC was absolutely flawless. (Hey, thought I'd put in a good word for SAC around here).

I was running my "A+" rig: Four JBL SRX 725 cabs fed by ITech 8000 amps (LF/MW) and Crown XTi 2000 amps (HF), six JBL SRX 728s subs (also fed by IT8K amps), six SRX 712m monitors (biamped: IT8K for LF/MF and Crown XLS 602 for HF), DriveRack 4800 for crossover and other duties. For delay stacks, I brought some JBL PRX 625 cabinets I just bought (more on those later).

The sound was incredible. The stage was in one corner of a rectangular section about 150 yards x 250 yards. Without the delay stacks, I was getting reasonable listening levels (line of sight) into a 150 square yard area (there were lots of vendors booths that formed a "sound shadow" but we really didn't need a lot of sound behind the vendor booths; they were out at about 100 yards from the stage).

It was funny, after I put up the four JBL SRX 725 cabinets the MC and event coordinator (two people) came and asked me if that was going to be sufficient equipment to cover the park. I told them yes. About a half-hour later we started making sound (playing a CD) and a big smile formed on their faces. I guess there was a big line array set up last year and they were worried we didn't have the "rig for the gig." After the last announcement and we turned off the system at 9:40p, they came by and told us over and over again how great the sound was.

This was the first show where I tried using a cardiod subwoofer array. I stuck 3 JBL SRX 728s cabinets in the back with 3 additional cabinets 4' 9" in front of them (with a 4.2 ms delay). For the first act, I somehow managed to get it completely wrong. There was LF on the stage and nothing out front. Swapped the cables during the first break between sets and that fixed the problem. It certainly removed a lot of LF material from the stage. Not sure we didn't take a big hit out in FOH. In a week and a half at my next big concert I'm going to go to the venue way early and try a straight sub array and a cardiod array and see which form I like better. It's nice not having the extra noise on the stage, but I need every dB possible in FOH as I only have six subs (and that event generally draws 3,500 people).

At the Freedom Fest we had a 24x20' stage with a 26'x30' truss/tarp cover, 16 Blizzard Rocklite RGBAWs and 8 Blizzard Puck RGBAW fixtures on the front of the truss, 12 ADJ LED PAR64 cans and four Chauvet ColorPar units on the back truss. We were running Chamsys' MagicQ PC on an HP TouchSmart 610 for lighting control.


I set up two JBL PRX 625 (powered dual 15" + 90-degree horn) about 150 yards from the stage. Two of them died within two hours of operation. Had to drive home (60 miles) to grab the other pair. Fortunately, you could still hear the main stage out to about 200 yards (granted, not very loud) and from 200 to 250 yards it was a water spectacular event taking place and they didn't really need the sound out there at that time, anyway. We really just needed the delay stacks for the fireworks simulcast at 9pm, so other than the fact that JBL's quality control is starting to look like Behringer's (at least on the PRX series; this is the second time in as many purchases of PRX gear that I've had problems), it went well.

Couple of comments on the PRX 625 cabinets: reliability seems to be an issue. I've had problems with two PRX 635 cabinets I've purchased and, now, two (out of four) PRX 625 cabinets I've purchased. Second issue: maybe I'm spoiled by the SRX 725 being fed by ITech 8K amps, but those PRX 635 didn't seem to get very loud. I was hoping to replace my MPro 225 cabinets (fed by XTi 4000 amps) at a big show I do in December, but it remains to be seen if they will be loud enough. Maybe it's the 90-degree coverage angle (versus 70 on the SRX and MPro cabinets) that's killing the SPL, but they didn't seem very loud to me at this show.

I ran the PRX 625 delay stacks wirelessly using a Line 6 transmitter/receiver package. The transmitter was at my FOH booth and the receiver was 200-250 feet away. Supposedly, the Line 6 unit has a range of 300', but we were having all sorts of problems with it (even line of sight, forget having the transmitter being blocked by a sea of bodies). If I ever have to go that distance again, I will daisy chain a pair of them. Quite honestly, I was going to buy a Lectrosonics unit for this show, but got the Line 6 because I was spending a heck of a lot of money to do this show and the Line 6 units were 1/3 the cost of the Lectrosonics ($500 vs $1,500). If I do a show like this again, I'll get to buy the Lectrosonics at that point. The Line 6 will probably do okay at the summer concert series starting in a week and a half where the delay stacks are about 100' from the FOH booth.

No power out at the delays stacks. Ran the PRX 625 cabs off a little Honda EU2000i generator. Perfect for this show.

I've mentioned in a separate post how amazing the Rocklite RGBAW fixtures are. Those suckers are bright. We had to run the fixtures at no more than 50% to keep from blinding the performers (and it wasn't wimpy performers complaining, either. I looked at one of those fixtures at 100% and it was like getting hit in the face with a laser -- I was seeing spots for 10 minutes afterwards). I had some Blizzard Puck RGBAW fixtures (3,000 lumens) trying to fill in some spots on the stage; they had no impact at all; the 25,000 lumens from the Rocklites blew them away.

I had to synchronize the CD playback on our stage with a CD player at the pyro booth. The guy was real concerned about latency between the CD player and our stage because they had a tightly synchronized fireworks show; after I asked, he assured me that the fireworks were accurate to tens of milliseconds (which is BS, human reaction time isn't even that good). I determined (by calling my sound guy's phone) that there was a half second of latency between the phones. So I had him start the CD, waited about 1/2 second, and then started the CD at the pyro booth. After the show, the pyro guy told me that I was off by three seconds and he was counting off three seconds after each cue on the CD before firing the pyro. I pointed out to him that we were at 4,000 feet, it was cool, and we were over 1,000 feet from the stage, so it took about 1-1.5 seconds for the sound to reach us and if we was synchronizing to the sound coming from the stage (and yes, you could hear it quite well at that distance; the delay stacks were pointing elsewhere btw) then he was really only about a second or so off and he was firing late if he was using the sound from the stage as the reference.

I didn't bother to mention to him that it was worthless trying to synchronize to anything less than about a second or second and a half because the crowd was spread out over such a wide area that there was a 1-1.5 second latency between the people hearing it next to the stage and those farthest away. You'd think that the pyro people would be aware of this...

Got home at 3AM July 5th. Got up at 12:30p, took a bath, ate something, and went back to sleep until 4am July 6. Man was I exhausted.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
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Re: July 4th Show

Postby Craig » Fri Jul 06, 2012 5:09 pm

Thanks for this info. I had been considering the PRX, but now am not anymore. I guess I'll stick to the SRX if I buy new JBL's at some point.
-Craig
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Re: July 4th Show

Postby leadfoot » Sat Jul 07, 2012 5:07 pm

Sounds like you did a great job job there!

Our band has 4 PRX 612m and two PRX 618S XLF Subs and we beat the crap out of 'em and they sound really good, no problems. Your experiences with them does kinda worry me though..
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