NEW YORK – AMC's Mad Men made its fourth-season premiere outdoors, in Times Square, with a large video screen, VIP seating and a sound system set up near 47th Street and Broadway – the epitome of urban sensory overload. Barely noticeable on either side of the stage were K-array's KH4 and KS4 compact loudspeakers.
Philadelphia-based Zeo Productions, the live event production division of The Zeo Group, handled sound for the event, overcoming the challenges of the hustle and bustle of the famous crossroads, plus rain and wind during setup.
And the application was unique. The sound system had to be small enough to ensure a 180-degree line of sight for live spectators, who were not only on the ground and in the stands, but also in nearby buildings. Sonically, the speakers had to be intelligible so both live and pre-recorded content could be clearly understood by those in attendance.
Daniel Zeo, vice president of Zeo Productions, needed a speaker with an small footprint and a powerful output. The self-powered K-array KH4 and KS4 combination turned out to be well-suited to the task. At 6 inches deep, it was remarkably thin, yet it had a continuous output of 139 dB.
"We chose to go with the K-arrays not only because they have an extremely smooth frequency response, but because maintaining great sightlines to the screen was very important – establishing a clear view for as many spectators as possible was fundamentally important for our client," said Zeo. "The KH4 and KS4, which were almost as easy to rig as a flat screen TV, were so thin that they were perfectly flush with the screen. We could not have achieved the same degree of visibility using a traditional array set up."
The event was covered by international media including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Mail in London, and fohonline.com, among others. On television, the event was viewed by approximately 2.9 million people in addition to the roughly 7,000 people in attendance.
"Everyone I spoke to was very surprised that such a powerful sound could come out of such a small box," said Aaron Garsky, a Zeo Productions technical engineer. "All in all, the sound coverage from top to bottom was really smooth. Outdoors, and especially in New York City, there are all sorts of environmental challenges, including winds coming down the skyscraper alleys. With the K-arrays, we were able to keep the audio present, intelligible and controlled. In this application, any other product would have been a step down."
For more information, please visit www.k-array.com, www.sennheiserusa.com and www.zeobrothers.com.
