ISP provides loudspeaker system for amphitheatre

The six thousand-seat amphitheatre, located at the banks of the Detroit River, recently wrapped up a full season of concerts that featured a complete loudspeaker system from Michigan based ISP Technologies.

Chene Park’s artist line up was heavy on R&B, Jazz, and Hip Hop and featured appearances by a diverse group including Lauryn Hill, Mos Def, and Erykah Badu.

The system consisted of 20 HDL 4212 line arrays, four HDL 4210 line arrays, 18 XMAX 212 subwoofers and a 14 piece ProWedge 212 monitor system. The 4212s were hung ten per side with two 4210s per side added as downfill. All of the subs were ground stacked and Michigan based Stage Works oversaw the installation and operational aspects of the rig.

Acting as both Chene Park’s system engineer and head audio engineer for Stage Works, Johnny Winkler played a key role in pushing through the ISP rig to visiting sound mixers. “The ISP boxes are not familiar to a lot of FOH mixers but nobody can argue with the results. Once they have mixed on it, 9 out of 10 guys have been absolutely blown away.”

Being situated in an urban area, as well as having various boats full of fans anchored along the river to listen to performances, provided several challenges to the Chene Park concert series. Being in an urban area requires sound to be contained while still providing that needed punch and low end that performers require. This was taken into consideration when determining the system design. ISP’s Jon Waller worked closely with Winkler using a proprietary in-house prediction system to best determine array configurations.

Buck Waller, president of ISP Technologies, commented, “We are a Michigan based company and love to work with local large scale events in the state. That being said, we knew that some great FOH engineers from all over the country would use this rig and they would insist on a high level of performance regardless of the local connection. We received nothing but praise from them this season.”