L-Acoustics powers Nashville country music festival

Sound Image supplied a large-scale L-Acoustics K1 system for the 42nd annual CMA Music Festival in Nashville, Tennessee.

Project Manager Curt Jenkins and his crew deployed a system comprised of 72 K1, 12 KARA and 16 KUDO line source elements, 16 K1-SB and 32 SB28 low frequency enclosures, and 78 LA8 amplified controllers.

The two primary loudspeaker arrays at Nashville’s LP Field consisted of six K1-SB and 16 K1 with three KARA downfills below, flanked by angled side hangs each featuring two K1-SB, 12 K1 and three KARA. Two six-KUDO auxiliary arrays covered the extreme left and right upper stadium seats, while two delay hangs near the back end of the field were both comprised of eight K1.

Low frequency reinforcement was augmented with three cardioid stacks of four SB28 per side and four pairings of two SB28 for center sub fill, while two stacks of two KUDO enclosures were perched atop the far left and right center sub fills. All systems were powered and processed by a combined total of 24 LA-RAK touring racks, each equipped with three LA8 amplified controllers.

Jenkins pointed out that Sound Image engineers Roz Jones and Rich Davis, along with L-Acoustics’ touring application engineer David Brooks were instrumental in the deployment and tuning of the system.

"Huge outdoor stadiums like LP Field are always particularly challenging for concert sound reinforcement because not only do you have to cover a huge number of seats, but you also have to deal with sound coming from a variety of different places," said Jenkins, "but I have to say that once we lined everything up with Dave Brooks’ assistance, the transition between all of the different arrays was so incredibly smooth."

CMA (Country Music Association) senior director of live events and special projects Chris Crawford and production director Brian Leedham oversaw the production as a whole, and both of them were extremely pleased with the results. "Sound Image truly exceeded expectations on everything from their crew to the PA," noted Crawford. "A huge thanks to them for helping us continue to improve the fan experience."

Jenkins added that engineers were also very satisfied with the system: "With many other stadium rigs, you often find that you have to change your mix so much to make things sound somewhat normal," he stated, "but with the way that Dave, Roz and Rich set this one up, it played to the engineer and sounded ‘right’ from the very start without requiring any significant tweaking. The comment that I kept hearing over and over was that K1 finally made it fun to mix this festival again."

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