The Sound Source provided JBL VERTEC, VRX and SRX speakers for two stages at the 2011 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, including the Lagniappe Stage.
NORTHRIDGE, California – The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is one of the largest live music events in the world, and the recent 2011 Jazz Fest featured seven days of music on no less than a dozen stages. The Festival celebrated the indigenous music and culture of New Orleans and Louisiana, encompassing jazz, blues, R&B, gospel, folk, rock, country, bluegrass and numerous other styles. The Sound Source of Metairie, Louisiana, handled sound reinforcement for two of the Festival’s stages. Tim Kilbride, owner and lead audio engineer for The Sound Source, found that HARMAN’s JBL VERTECA® VT4886 subcompact line array elements were ideal for the event.
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, as well as SRX712M speakers for stage monitors.
“This is our third year using VERTEC loudspeakers at Jazz Fest,”? noted Kilbride. “We’ve been extremely happy with their performance. The quality of the sound VERTEC produces is extremely accurate.”?
“In fact, the VERTEC arrays provided exceptional sound even under less-than-ideal circumstances,”? continued Kilbride. “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. 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,”? Kilbride concluded. “This year’s Festival had an estimated 400,000 people show up for the 7-day event.”?
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