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For Immediate Release Jason Mraz on Tour with the QSC Audio WideLine-10 Line Array System  Out on an international tour continuing through all of 2009, supporting his multi-Platinum 2008 release, "We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things...", featuring the Top Ten Single, "I'm Yours," the Virginia born and bred artist made a stop at Colorado's stunning 9,450-seat Red Rocks Amphitheater. Adding some "dB push" to Mraz's melodically brilliant hit songs at, what is considered, God's greatest all-natural, acoustically perfect live performance venue, was a QSC Audio WideLine-10 Line Array loudspeaker system, consisting of 24 cabinets per side with a four-cabinet center array. According to Matt Kornick, Sound Image systems tech and Jason Mraz tour crew chief, "In addition, 16 JBL Vertec 4880 Subwoofers, in a Cardioid Pattern, provided the low-end and the entire FOH system was driven by 32 Crown ITECH 8000 Amplifiers." The Mraz tour cabinet inventory rounds out with 4 Audio Composite Engineering 1160's for center fills, 2 Sound Image CF Speakers, for Outfills, and 12 Sound Image G2 stage monitor wedges. Sound Image sent a Venue Console out on the Mraz tour, because as Kornick puts it, "E.T simply loves it and prefers the tactile fell of the faders on the surface." Michael Goldfarb relies on a Yamaha PM5D for the monitor console, as "he uses all of its onboard processing," states, Kornick. "Additionally, for an act like Mraz, Goldfarb will have at least 18 to mixes set at any given time, all capabilities that he finds the console can handle quite easily." Jason's sponsorship of Shure microphones has the band out on tour with SM-57's, SM-58's, SM-81's, Beta 52, Beta 91, Beta 98's, a SM-86 for Jason's vocal, as well as Shure UHF-R Wireless components; UR4D Wireless Receivers, and UR-1 Instrument Pack Transmitters. In ear monitoring was handled by 4 Sennheiser G2 IEM Systems. Stage manager and monitor engineer Michael Goldfarb, who has been on tour with Mraz since 2003, points out, "We were one of the first tours that, early adopter, Dave Shadoan of Sound Image sent out with the WideLine-10 System. That was Mraz's 2005 'Mister A-Z' tour, which hit all the leading theaters." Goldfarb quickly and easily became acclimated to the WideLine-10 system, which on that tour consisted of 12 WideLine-10 cabinets per side. Now, after years of experience with the system, Goldfarb and front-of-house engineer, Ettore DeDivitiis (simplistically known as ET), are assuringly matter-of-fact when they refer to QSC Audio's WideLine-10 system as about as "plug-and-play" as you can get. ET states, "The Wideline-10 is a great on-the-fly PA, especially for when you're in time-constraint situations, such as festivals. It runs nicely from the truck, to the air, through the show and back to the truck." Goldfarb continues, "At Red Rocks, with chains in the air and with power, we have 24 boxes per-side up and active in 35-mintues." Mraz's "We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things..." tour traversed the United States hitting the major outdoor mega-theaters and sheds, such as the breathtaking Red Rocks and the legendary Jones Beach Amphitheater on Long Island, New York. Goldfarb quips, "When local sound professionals and promoters see the WideLine-10 system rolling off the truck, the reaction has consistently been, 'where's the rest of the PA?' Then they hear it. Anyone who knows anything about sound walks up to the soundman and says, "Man, that is really unbelievable.'" Goldfarb adds, "This WideLine array's wavefront length is the same as 12 or more large format line array cabinets, and the one thing that the audio science guys will tell you; it's not the size of the speaker cabinet, it's the wave form from top to bottom. That's why we have 24 boxes per side, which is as long as 16 Vertec Boxes." ET, who has worked with Mraz off-and-on for five years, has been on tour with the artist and hands-on with the WideLine-10 system now for a steady 18-months when the show rolled into Red Rocks. With several years of experience on WideLine, using the system on tour with Canadian singer/songwriter Tom Cochran, ET states, "For the whole production, WideLine is really easy to work with and they sound great." Continuing, ET says, "Red Rocks is a big venue, and the long-throw capabilities here are impressive. For this venue, we shade 5 dB off the bottom three boxes and 4 dB off the next four boxes up, with the front-of-house volume running just under 100 dB A-weighted. With the WideLine-10 system, you don't need to punch it hard, like other systems, to get the fidelity." Additionally, ET is using the QSC SC28 System Controller on his WideLine-10 system. "The SC28 works really well and I haven't had to screw around with it beyond the presets. We've actually implemented setting changes during the show, especially when the set list changes on-the-fly, where I open up the splay setting to add a little brightness. Without having to reconfigure each cabinet, the presets make using the SC28 seemless." As a result, very little "tweaking" time and measurement is needed. At Red Rocks, tuning consisted of little more than time-aligning the subs to the rest of the rig and doing a bit of amplitude shading. ET is also quick to add, "Other systems will claim 120-degree horizontal dispersion. The QSC WideLine-10 system delivers a wonderfully true 140 degree dispersion that actually does cover every seat in that range." ET notes that the WideLine's sound is exceptional, even at low volume, without muddiness. And it doesn't get brittle at loud volumes either, "which is critical to an artist like Mraz, who incorporates a lot of horns into his music." During the show, he also pointed out that the only dynamics processing he was using were the noise gates on the drums. Everything else was running full dynamic range, no compressors anywhere and the result was an unusually open and dynamic mix. "The WideLine-10 system really has the qualities that audiences enjoy from a sound system, and it's probably the best and most musical PA system for vocals," ET says. "The instruments layer very nicely into mix, from the top to the bottom, fitting in perfectly to support the vocals. That's a big thing for me, as I work with a lot of artists like Mraz, Natalie Cole and Tom Cochran; these are all artists with a story to tell. It's even more important for the fans who want to clearly hear the lyrics." Goldfarb states, "For a fidelity mix, such as Mraz, that's vocal-centric, acoustic instrument-based music, the vocals really just jump out of the Wideline System. It's not hard to make a 'loud' speaker, but it is really hard to make a loudspeaker sound good right out of the box. There isn't another PA I would rather use for Jason Mraz."
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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 Current News |