ASPEN, CO – Founded in 1991, the Jazz Aspen Snowmass Festival has grown to become one of Colorado's most popular outdoor music festivals. The recent 2010 event in Snowmass Town Park hosted a wide variety of artists including Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Black Crowes, Glenn Frey and Joe Walsh, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, Wilco and other acts. The 3-day festival attracted more than 35,000 fans each day.
Audio Visions, which has offices in Omaha and Minneapolis, has fielded a JBL VerTec system at the festival for the past five years. For the most recent event, Audio Visions provided a main PA system comprising 12 JBL VerTec VT4889 full-size line array elements per side, with an additional six VT4888 midsize line array elements in use for front fill. A dbx DriveRack 4800 loudspeaker management system was in use for front-end processing.
"After five successful years, we've grown to know the characteristics of VerTec very well," said Chip Kempke of Audio Visions. "We know that the VT4889 has the performance characteristics needed for this large-scale festival, which features a wide variety of musical acts and styles."
At an altitude of 8,200 feet, "the thin mountain air requires us to drive the system at a higher level than normal to deliver a high SPL," said front of house engineer Elliot Nielsen. "The thin air really deadens the sound, so we typically have to push the system very hard. The VT4889 loudspeakers handle the situation without difficulty. The VerTec system has performed as advertised; it's an easy-to-use line array with a ton of horsepower and performs predictably in any environment."
The outdoor stage venue poses other challenges as well. "The roof of the stage is curved, which creates some really weird frequency responses at various locations, and the sound can get a little muddled on the monitor mix side of the stage because of echo reflections from the roof," said Kempke. "We've had to learn what the roof was doing to the sound distribution on stage and in the audience area, and make adjustments to work around it."
The diverse musical lineup presented yet another test for crew and gear. "The lineup of artists at this festival ranges from popular and rock to jazz, blues and hip-hop, so we need a system that can handle the varying dynamic contrasts and still provide high-quality sound," noted Kempke, who credited the JBL VerTec loudspeakers for "superior" sound quality and "the requisite directivity characteristics and power-handling capability for a large-scale outdoor event."
For more information, please visit www.harman.com and www.audio-visions.com.
