According to Jim Yakabuski, Journey’s front of house engineer, the band has few stipulations when it comes to its sound. “Journey is pretty hands-off for the most part,” Yakabuski said, “although they do ask me to keep the low end off the stage, so I try to keep the subwoofers from folding back onto the stage and keep the stage nice and clean.”
Journey’s latest tour started in June 2012, touring with Clair Global and their I5 loudspeaker system. This summer, Journey didn’t carry PA as there were many festivals and “one-off” shows, enabling Yakabuski to listen to the latest and greatest line array technology on the market. “I have to say that loudspeaker technology has really come a long way the past few years,” he said. “The VTX system was definitely one of the best we used this summer and we had five great shows with it. It wasn’t a problem at all keeping the low end off the stage with VTX.”
“The VTX system has a very nice clean and crisp high end,” Yakabuski added. “The whole midrange to high-end seemed really coherent and held together. There was also plenty of power, so we had no problems there.”
According to Yakabuski, a major advantage of VTX is how good it sounds right out of the box. “We used the JBL HiQnet Performance Managerâ„¢ software as well, which allowed us to take the low-end frequency response all the way down in the main V25 loudspeakers,” he said.
All in all, the five shows with the VTX system were a tremendous success. “[Clair System Engineer] David Quigley and I would like to thank [Plus 4 Marketing members] Keith Erickson and Jim Mathews, Alchemy Concert Systems [who provided the audio system in Aspen], as well as [Technical Support Lead, Tour Sound, JBL Professional] George Georgallis. They all put a lot of effort and time into making sure the system was set up properly. It makes it so much easier.”
Follow JBL Professional on Facebook at
www.facebook.com/jblprofessional
Follow Crown Audio on Facebook at
www.facebook.com/crownbyharman
HARMAN (
) designs, manufactures, and markets a wide range of infotainment and audio solutions for the automotive, consumer, and professional markets. It is a recognized world leader across its customer segments with premium brands including AKGA®, Harman KardonA®, InfinityA®, JBLA®, LexiconA®, and Mark LevinsonA® and leading-edge connectivity, safety and audio technologies. The company is admired by audiophiles across multiple generations and supports leading professional entertainers and the venues where they perform. More than 25 million automobiles on the road today are equipped with HARMAN audio and infotainment systems. HARMAN has a workforce of about 14,000 people across the Americas, Europe, and Asia and reported sales of $4.3 billion for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2013.
