ATLANTA, GEORGIA— HARMAN Professional Solutions’ JBL loudspeakers and Crown amplifiers were once again selected to provide superior sound and coverage at the 2015 BET Hip Hop Awards at the Atlanta Civic Center. Hosted by Snoop Dogg, this year’s award winners included Drake, Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West. Firehouse Productions, a Red Hook, New York based Pro AV company deployed the new JBL VTX line array elements.
More details from Harman Professional Solutions (www.harman.com):
Firehouse Productions, a company with credits including the iHeartRadio Music Festival and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, has been the longtime provider for the BET Hip Hop Awards. For this year’s show, Firehouse Productions provided excellent sound quality and coverage featuring JBL VTX V25-II loudspeakers powered by an impressive set of Crown I-Tech 4x3500HD amplifiers.
To best showcase the event’s musical performances, the Firehouse Productions team aimed for nothing less than maximum clarity and intelligibility in all directions. The rig for the show included six flown JBL VT4880A loudspeakers, two ground-stacked VT4880A subwoofers, 11 VTX V25-II loudspeakers per side and eight JBL VT4886 loudspeakers for front fill. Mark Dittmar, Lead Design & Integration Engineer at Firehouse Productions, said the switch to the new VTX V25-II line array provided substantial benefits, particularly for a hip-hop show.
“The VTX V25-IIs were a great choice for this show,” said Dittmar. “You get so much more on the low end, which is great, because we didn’t have much room for subwoofers. Being a hip-hop show, the boost on the low end made a huge difference.”
Dittmar has been using HARMAN Professional Solutions products since Davie Bowie asked Firehouse to supply JBL VT4889 loudspeakers for his tour more than 15 years ago. He said he’s marveled ever since at the evolution of new JBL products, which have continued to set the standard for innovation and quality.
“It’s been amazing to see the steady progression of HARMAN Professional Solutions,” said Dittmar. “We actually thought the new VTX V25-IIs might not be markedly different from what came before, but we were dead wrong. The front-of-house (FOH) engineers for the BET Hip-Hop Awards were blown away by the sound quality of the VTX V-25-IIs. Of course, it’s hard not to be impressed. It’s yet another in a long line of ‘wow’ moments courtesy of HARMAN Professional Solutions, which is why we continue to use their products.”
