SEE AND YOU SHALL HEAR

For Immediate Release

SEE AND YOU SHALL HEAR

New sound draws crowds at ACL Fest

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WideLine-8 and WideLine-10 Line Arrays

There is something for everyone at the Austin City Limits Festival, unless you are a fan of opera or hardcore rap. With Bob Dylan, the White Stripes, and Ziggy Marley turning up this year on the 130-act roster, Austin's Zilker Park hosted the three-day festival's run last fall.

"ACL Fest isn't about two huge acts and 128 others," event promoter Charles Attal of C3 Presents told the Austin American-Statesman prior to the festival. "Our model is for fans to come out to the park and check out all these great acts at a reasonable price."

Low prices, warm weather, great acts: For whatever reason, the numbers were indeed good at this year's ACL gathering, with over 50,000 music fans coming through the gates each day.

At the Washington Mutual (WaMu) stage, a venue largely known up until this year as a haven for gospel acts with a capacity of 2,500, crowds packed the big top-style tent and swelled around its perimeter to what one insider backstage estimated to be a number of 13,000 or so to hear Ziggy Marley. Charged with bringing sound reinforcement to the stage, Rod Nielsen of Austin's Big House Sound relied upon a QSC rig based around the Costa Mesa, CA-based manufacturer's WideLine-10 and WideLine-8 loudspeakers to soothe the teeming masses with music.

"This stage has never seen these kinds of crowds before," Nielsen points out, still sounding overwhelmed by the size of the audiences that showed up. "It's never been a place where we are trying to fulfill strict terms dictated by a rider either. But with Ziggy Marley probably being one of the bigger draws this year, we figured that even though the promoters weren't asking for it, we'd give them a lot more in terms of sound."

Eager to put their WideLine system to the test in its first ever appearance at the ACL Fest, QSC's Brian English and Jon Graves shipped complete systems for both the house PA and stage monitors to Zilker Park from Costa Mesa. In total, five WideLine-10s, four WideLine-8s, and three double-18 WideLine subs were flown from each side of the stage at WaMu, with extended LF coming from four more double-12 WideLine subs slid under the stage.

With amplification coming from a pair of PowerLight PL340s used for the high-end and seven PL380s standing-in for subs and low/mids, processing was provided by a pair of BASIS 914lz units. Signal transport functions within the digital realm fell under the guidance of a single RAVE 522aa device also culled from the QSC catalog.

"Our mindset was that even though we were given the task of bringing sound to just the area within the WaMu tent itself, if you were standing anywhere on the outside and could see the stage, then you should be able to hear the music too," Nielsen relates. "The challenge we faced in meeting this goal was to be able to throw great distances beyond the perimeter of the tent, while still obtaining the exceptionally wide dispersion we needed."

The horizontal dispersion of both the WideLine-8 and WideLine-10 cabinets is 140 degrees--the widest of any line array in its class. Compact and lightweight, the boxes additionally facilitated high trim heights in the 16-foot-tall, 8-foot wide by 8-foot deep towers allotted to both arrays on each side of the stage.

"The weight of these arrays was as minimal as the footprint they left," Nielsen adds. "We only needed a 1/4-ton chain motor for each. As for the performance, the WideLines may be small, but they pack a punch. Even for the people standing to the far left and right of the stage, the coverage and clarity was superb."

Stage monitoring at WaMu was managed by self-powered HPR Series components from QSC including a group of nine, multipurpose HPR122i enclosures serving as floor wedges, HPR153i sidefills and HPR151i sidefill subs, HPR152i drum fills, and HPR181i drum subs.

"Bringing this PA to the WaMu stage made it possible for a lot more people to enjoy the show," Nielsen says, reflecting back as plans are already being made for next year's ACL Fest. "I also feel that the improvements in sound at the venue this year had a lot to do with the increased numbers of people that turned out. In years past, people passing the tent once it was full inside couldn't hear, so they walked on to the next stage. This time, with a significantly increased area of coverage, we literally extended the size of the show beyond the tent. It was engaging on a larger scale, and we have proof in sheer numbers. If you look at the bulk of the work most sound companies do on a daily basis, a PA like this makes good sense in terms of weight, how easy it rigs, and its price point. Factor in the performance, and you have a workhorse that sounds good too."

QSC Audio Products, LLC is a leading manufacturer of power amplifiers, loudspeakers, signal processing, digital signal transport, and computer control systems for professional audio markets worldwide.

For further information contact:
publicity@qscaudio.com

QSC Audio Products, LLC
1675 MacArthur Blvd.
Costa Mesa, CA 92626 USA.
Telephone (800) 854-4079 (USA only) or (714) 754-6175
Fax (714) 754-6174
E-mail publicity@qscaudio.com
Web www.qscaudio.com

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