Harman?s JBL VerTec and Crown power LA Rising music festival

This year’s LA Rising Festival saw JBL VerTec line arrays and Crown amplifiers deployed to provide sound for over 60,000 people.

The festival, which took place on July 30th at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, featured performances from Muse, Rage Against the Machine, and Lauryn Hill and saw more than 250 Harman JBL VerTec line array loudspeakers and 152 Crown Audio I-Tech HD Series power amplifiers in use.

Sound Image of Escondido, California designed and deployed the sound system under the direction of Mike Sprague, director of touring for Sound Image. The system included 132 JBL VerTec VT4889 fullsize line array elements and 110 VT4880 full size array subwoofers for the main system and for the three delay towers, along with eight VT4889 speakers and eight VT4880 subwoofers used for stage monitoring and side fill.

Four columns of 18 VT4889 loudspeakers and four columns of 18 VT4880 subwoofers – eight columns in total – were hung on either side of four poles that held up the roof of the stage structure (along with two poles in the back). Two out fill arrays of 12 VT4889’s were placed at the left and the right of the stage facing 90 degrees outward from the front. Two stacks of 10 VT4880 subwoofers were placed at the foot of the left and right front of the stage along with 18 VT4880’s at the centre of the stage to provide low-frequency ground-level coverage. There were three delay towers behind the FOH position, each with 12 VT4889’s.

While such a large set-up may seem daunting for many rental sound contractors, Sprague took it in his stride: “We really didn’t face any major acoustical challenges. We just put in enough PA so that all 60,000 people were covered with volume and clarity. True, we wound up having to put in a lot of speakers to accomplish that!”

“Believe it or not, we didn’t face any major challenges in setting up the system either,” Sprague continued. “Getting the delay towers in the right position was a bit of a task, and getting enough AC power from the generators to run the system wasn’t easy. Ultimately we got what we needed by using 400 amps of 3-phase power for each side of the stage and 200 amps of 3-phase for the delay towers.”

“We continue to use JBL VERTEC for major events like this because our success with JBL components has been second to none, and we have a longstanding track record with them,” noted Sprague. “We use VERTEC because of the superior sound quality and reliability. The Crown amps also performed as one would expect from a very reliable amplifier provider.”