V-Series Squares up for July 4th at Lenox.
As traditions go, fifty seven years of Independence Day party events at Lenox Square, Atlanta says a lot about the enduring quality embedded at Lenox. The oldest and most prestigious shopping mall in the city, Lenox Square provides the ultimate retail experience for customers, and every July 4th, a range of musical performances culminating in a spectacular ten thousand piece firework display.
Free to attend, this year music was provided by the Sons of Sailors, the region’s ultimate Jimmy Buffet tribute band, and Party on the Moon - just what’s required for a family night out. Atlanta based In Concert Productions (locally known by the more familiar ‘In Concert’) were in charge of the audio and opted for a d&b V-Series system to provide for the approximately fifty thousand strong audience on the day. They also brought their own quality twist to the show, as President of In Concert Jay Rabbit explained.
“We had fifty percent of the audience directly in front of the stage, another 25,000 down the side streets; so a lot of people to cover in widely different listening positons relative to the performance stage. We used a V system throughout, even the delays. We’ve not had the system that long and used ArrayProcessing to provide consistent tone and level for the whole audience. We had so much headroom in the system and such good quality sound, you could see it in the public reaction. We’ve never had so many people come up to us afterwards and say how good it sounds and ask us for a business card.”
Independent sound engineer Garry Sharp has mixed for Lenox’ July 4th celebrations for many years and knew he was being presented with something new. “The sonic clarity of the V-Series speaker system was amazing. Along with the V and J-INFRA subs, the entire rig had a feeling of power I had never really heard before. Everywhere I went, it sounded the same which is really the key to a concert speaker system. I did almost no overall EQ adjustments and no matter what level I was running at, tonal balance never changed. With the accuracy of the d&b system, you better have your mix together because, as I like to say, there is no place to hide."
One of the conditions Sharp had to contend with was climate. “The show was in one hundred degree heat,” explained Rabbit, “with typical Georgia midsummer 60-70% humidity. It even rained a couple of times during the day. The D80 amps were fine with the heat, and the adjustment for temperature and humidity available within the ArrayProcessing tool kept the sound right as Garry needed it to be. That’s what’s so cool about this system; I recall seeing Garry walk down to the stage and then back to the rear of the audience and the first thing he said was, ‘Hey, it’s not ripping people’s heads off at the front, yet when you walk back it doesn’t fall off either. We are loving that’. We know just what he meant.”
