ATHENS, GA – More than 35,000 attended the graduation ceremony at the University of Georgia (UGA)'s Sanford Stadium, which featured a speech by Alton Brown of the Food Network and vocalists accompanying the UGA School of Music's 71-piece Wind Symphony.
Ric Wallace, technical director for the Tate Student Center, used Nexo and Yamaha gear for the event. Wallace flew a string of 19 Nexo GEO T line array speakers per side. The University owns 12 GEO T boxes and sub-rented the remaining 26 from ESI Audio in Tampa, Fla. Camco amps and a rack of NXamp 4×4 amplifiers powered the system.
"The existing stadium PA system has a very long delay time when you stand at mid-field," said Wallace, noting that "the Nexo system enabled me to achieve the sound pressure I needed in the upper seating levels."
Wallace said he would have had to build a scaffold sound tower for an alternative brand of line source over 70 feet tall at considerable expense. Because of the low per cabinet weight of the GEO T, he was able to build a 50-foot tall truss tower at reduced cost.
Wallace credited the Nexo system for "the precision of focus and uniform response these cabinets provide. The speaker simply does not excite the walls and ceilings in reverberant rooms, and RT60 is massively reduced," he added, while "slapback phenomena from distant walls is a thing of the past."
Wallace noted that with the Nexo system, the laser inclinometer in the bumper paired with GEOSoft2 to help focus the wavefront on the audience instead of the walls. "Getting the math right with this system means that many common acoustic problems disappear."
He called the vocal detail and stereo image "stunning" with the GEO T. "I can get a thick, heavy mix working with plenty of guitar in the mix, and when I push that lead vocal fader on the console up, the voice literally jumps out of the PA system; just pops right out on top of the mix."
Wallace typically walks the room he's working in to get a better feel for the mix. "With the GEO T, it sounds almost exactly the same everywhere in the sound field with very nearly the same SPL in the near field as 100 feet away."
UGA's Yamaha PM5D was used at front of house running at 96kHz, utilizing Waves plug-ins. "I chose the PM5D because it is more analog sounding and sounds much better at high levels when it's clocked at 96kHz, compared to consoles that are limited to 48kHz operation," Wallace said. "I use a BigBen external clock on the console to ensure that there's no possibility of frame dropping," he added, also crediting the PM5D for ease of use.
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