NEW ORLEANS – Spanning seven days, a dozen stages, and drawing a total audience of about 400,000, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is one of the largest live music events in the world. Metairie, LA-based The Sound Source supported two of the stages with JBL VerTec VT4886 subcompact line array elements.
For each of the two stages, The Sound Source deployed five JBL VT4886 loudspeakers per side, with VRX932LA Constant Curvature Series loudspeakers for front fills and outfills, plus SRX712M speakers for stage monitors.
"This is our third year using VerTec loudspeakers at Jazz Fest," noted Tim Kilbride, The Sound Source's owner and lead audio engineer. "We've been extremely happy with their performance," he added, crediting the sound VerTec produces as "extremely accurate," despite "less-than-ideal circumstances.
"The Lagniappe Stage, one of the stages where we worked, is in a very non-acoustical-friendly area, and the PA also shoots directly into a large tent that is located about 40 feet from the front edge of the stage," Kilbride noted. "Ordinarily, this would be a sonic nightmare, but we were able to supplement the main system with some VRX cabinets on a delay line at the front inside edge of the tent, which greatly improved intelligibility. We also used additional SRX712M speakers as outfills for the outer seating areas, which further improved the sound."
In addition to JBL loudspeakers, The Sound Source used Soundcraft Vi1 and Si Compact digital mixing consoles, BSS Audio FCS-960 equalizers and dbx 160A compressor/limiters.
"Outside of Jazz Fest, we've also produced events of more than 7,500 people using our JBL VerTec VT4887ADP powered line array elements," Kilbride added. "The vocal clarity of all the VerTec models we've used is very impressive. Their ease of setup and use is also very appealing to our techs. The opportunity to generate additional revenue supporting other VERTEC users by supplying additional units has been a real plus as well. Overall the Festival was a big success."
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