BUSHNELL, Ill. — The Cornerstone Christian Rock and Alternative Music Festival is a weeklong festival in central Illinois celebrating Christian participation in the arts and culture. More than 20,000 people attend, coming from all over the world to camp on a 550-acre piece of land. The sound system to meet this challenge was set up and monitored by Bobby Spangler of Susquehanna Sound Productions and relied on speakers and processors from Bag End Loudspeaker Systems.
At the heart of the system were six Bag End Crystal-R Self-Powered High Frequency speakers, two Quartz-R Self-Powered subwoofers and an Infra-MX2 Processor.
One challenge in preparing a sound system for a music festival is the wide variety of music that is played in a single venue. A gig in which one or two groups share a stage is one thing; providing great sound for a wide range of different groups who perform in the same space is a challenge of another order.
Music ranged from acoustic folk to full-on hardcore and everything in between. And it all went out to the audience through the same sound system. Compounding the challenge was the fact that performances took place in a 40- by 120-foot canvas tent with a peaked top that tended to reflect high-frequency sound energy directly down to the ground in the audience area.
After viewing the performance area, Spangler arranged the system by placing the Crystal-R speakers on either side of the 24- by 16-foot stage, on 7-foot high scaffolding, balanced by the Quartz-R subwoofers placed directly under them. After experimenting, Spangler discovered that the HF speakers needed to be set at their narrow angle, rather the wide angle as he had thought at first, because of the sloped tent roof. He also found that tilting the speaker array downward slightly gave better balance and made the mid-High coverage consistent throughout the tent.
After the first night’s performances, however, he found lots of energy coming from the Quartz-R speakers, but it needed to be directed more forward into the audience. He installed a Bag End D-18 Self-Powered Sub directly under downstage center, and this effectively coupled all the subs across the front of the stage and directed the low-frequency sound into the audience.
“The feedback from my staff and from engineers with some of the groups was very consistent: the rig sounded just great,” Spangler said. “Guest engineers commented that they usually did an initial sound check, then adjusted after the first few numbers to get the sound right, but that with this Bag End combination, their mix held up from the first note.”
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