A series of performances by George Strait at the Las Vegas T-Mobile Arena saw in-house engineers work with production engineers from VER to design a massive, 14-cluster JBL VTX line array system to serve the in-the-round audience.
With a six-cluster JBL VTX line array system serving as the permanent house system, ATK Audiotek installed 72 VTX V25-II elements and 36 VTX S28 subwoofers, powered by 18 Crown V-Racks.
‘The George Strait production crew of Paul Rogers and Stacey LaBarbera knew there was a nice JBL VTX system at T-Mobile already, and because we have the same system, they asked if we could marry our systems to create something very special,’ says VER National Audio Sales Manager, Joe Casanova. ‘So that’s exactly what we did. We came up with a massive, 14-cluster, double in-the-round VTX rig that worked astoundingly well. Paul Bauman (Associate Director, Global Tour Sound Business Development, Harman Professional Solutions) was very helpful in so many ways. He’s a smart man, and it’s always a pleasure to work with him on projects like this.’
The VTX V25-II is a full-size, three-way, high-directivity line array element using a fourth-generation waveguide, which improves long-throw performance and wavefront control. Crown I-Tech HD amplification with BSS OmniDriveHD V5 Processing, and JBL HiQnet Performance Manager configuration and control software complete the system package.
With today’s connectivity, a system of this size can come together pretty quickly,’ Casanova says. ‘We connected our system to the house system via Dante. Basically, the house system’s six clusters took care of the upper bowl area, and the eight additional arrays we brought in took care of the lower bowl and floor area. We had a total of 152 V25–II elements and 48 VTX S28 subs in use. It sounded amazing.
‘The house guys were very accommodating – they let us have full access to the house system,’ he continues. ‘Our system engineers Kevin Valind and Eddie Harbin did a superb job of tuning the system. They were able to bring the house arrays in a little, turned some elements off, and really tailored the sound for the arena and to the ear of George Strait’s FOH Engineer George Olsen. Everything was powered by Crown. Both our systems have the same amps, so we used Performance Manager 2.0 for efficient and precise control of this large-scale system.’
Designed for optimum performance and set-up simplicity, the Crown VRack Complete Amplification System provides a turnkey amplification package. With Crown-engineered components already built in and no assembly required, it’s an easy-to-configure, all-in-one amplifier solution that eliminates the time-consuming process of building amp racks.
‘What really stood out is the accuracy of the VTX system,’ Casanova says. ‘The intelligibility was stellar, and you could understand every word. The vocals were out front, and you could hear every note of every instrument. Every seat in the house got the same crystal-clear experience. This was just the first of several George Strait events at T-Mobile Arena, and everything went exceedingly well. The audience really got their money’s worth.’
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