American DJ and record producer Bassnectar recently performed to sold out crowds during three shows at the Red Rocks Amphitheater – a geologically formed open-air amphitheatre just west of Denver, where the stage and seating area for 9,400 are surrounded by massive rock outcrops.
Using the natural terrain, the venue reaches back 300ft from the downstage edge with an 80ft elevation at the rear. This requires 20° of upward sound propagation to reach the rear of the seating. ‘Red Rocks is a challenging environment,’ says Bassnectar FOH engineer, Jason Decter. ‘I knew the system could blanket the seating area and drop off where required and sound better than any other system out there.’
Rat Sound provided sound reinforcement featuring EAW Anya line arrays – the system was specified by Decter, knowing it would contain the sound to the seating area while keeping within venue noise guidelines. Last year the band was fined for violating the noise ordinance, and it was extremely important that it not happen again.
Decter worked with EAW’s Bernie Broderick and Rat Sound’s Jason Brandt, to design the system using EAW Resolution software. They modelled the venue, loaded the system in and had the first show the same day: ‘It went up super-fast,’ Decter reports. ‘The 18-cabinet Anya arrays were the largest assembled columns to date – and it sounded fantastic. We shaded it down at the top and it was perfect.’
Each Anya module includes 22 customised transducers – 14 HF compression drivers provide a continuous line of apertures on a horn that expands to fill the entire face of the enclosure, six 5-inch MF cone transducers combine with Radial Phase Plugs and Concentric Summation Array technology to sum coherently with the HF wavefront, and dual 15-inch LF cone transducers employ Offset Aperture loading to extend horizontal pattern control well into the lower octaves. Each of the 22 transducers in an Anya module are powered and processed independently to provide extremely high resolution and control.
In addition to the Anya modules, six EAW KF364NT enclosures were placed along the lip of the stage for front fill: ‘We were right at the SPL limits at the microphone, louder in the audience area and actually way below the limit outside the venue,’ Decter explains. ‘That just proves how well Anya truly contains sound.’
As is common for late May performances, the weather varied greatly during the three day event. The first day was rainy and windy, day two was a beautiful 86° and the third was a mix of rain, wind and sunshine.
‘The system stayed the same for every performance,’ Decter says. ‘The rig almost defies gravity with the sound staying put exactly where you want it – no matter what the weather is like. The place was sold out every night and everyone in the venue had nothing but positive things to say and we didn’t hear a peep from the neighbours – exactly what we were looking for.’
More: www.ratsound.com
More: www.eaw.com
