Sound company Premier Production & Sound Services (PSS) recently supplied the sound reinforcement system for the Voodoo Experience Festival, where more than 80 artists performed for more than 100,000 people at New Orleans’ City Park.

It was the third successive year that PSS had served the three-day festival, rolling in Soundcraft mixing consoles, JBL VTX and VerTec line arrays, and Crown amplifiers. Two Soundcraft Vi6 digital live sound consoles were used – one for front of house and the other for monitor mixes. In all, PSS equipped the festival’s Flambeau Stage with eight JBL VTX V25 elements per side and four stacks of three S28 subwoofers in cardioid configuration. In addition, 12 VT4886 subcompact line array elements were sited on top the subwoofers for front fill. And the system was driven by 28 Crown IT 12000 HD amplifiers.

Stage sound was furnished by 16 JBL SRX712M wedges, plus 12 VT4886 loudspeakers and six VT4883 subcompact subwoofers. The loudspeakers on stage were powered by nine Crown IT 4x3500 HD amplifiers.

PSS Head Audio Engineer and co-owner Brian Gordon used the JBL VTX-LZ-K Laser Accessory Kit to align all the loudspeakers in the system. ‘This was our third year of working on the Voodoo Experience festival and our second with the JBL VTX Series line arrays,’ says PSS Director of Operations and co-owner, Russ Bryant. ‘At a large-scale outdoor rock festival like this, the demands on a loudspeaker system are tremendous in terms of the sheer SPL and coverage required – and the V25 line arrays are phenomenal in their ability to deliver clear sound even at high volume, with pristine, effortless headroom especially in the upper midrange and high frequencies.

‘Having four channels in one amp allowed us to significantly cut down on the amount of cabling we needed and save a lot of time and labor,’ he continues. ‘We are very happy with the flexibility they offer and the fact that they can be optimised for use with VTX and VerTec loudspeakers using their V5 DSP presets.’

The choise of mixing consoles, meanwhile, ensured a smooth transitions between acts: ‘We wound up using the Soundcraft Vi6 consoles for 31 FOH and monitor changeovers,’ Bryant says. ‘I can tell you that the Vi6 was much easier to use than other consoles that were at the festival.

‘The Vi6 still passes signal while you’re loading show files into it where some other consoles will not, which is a major benefit during the hectic time constraints of a big festival,’ he adds.

‘There were four total stages at Voodoo Experience 2013 and we had many people coming over from the other stages telling us that our stage sounded the best.’