Concert
&Touring

Southard Audio of Mount Crawford, VA supported a Chris Isaak at the Sprint Pavilion in Charlottesville, VA.

As described by Southard’s Jason Misterka, “Sprint Pavilion is a 3,500-seat amphitheatre that’s covered by a tent, with concrete floors that slope down to a bowl and a built-in stage. It also has lawn and picnic seating outside of the entrance and is situated at the east end of the downtown mall in Charlottesville. We have to be mindful of how much bleed there was to the adjacent neighbourhoods while ensuring there was the audio quality within the tent itself and finally, there’s a small lawn area outside the tent that also has to sound good without bleed down into the mall area.”

The system setup consisted of 8 x WPL per side using one-box resolution for maximum effectiveness in the space, along with 6 x SXH218 a side ground-stacked in cardioid formation stage left and stage right. 4 x CDD-LIVE 15 were deployed as front fills on the stage.

Essentially, the venue was measured in advance and three versions of the system were setup and tested: One version was to Hard Avoid® the stage area. Another version was Hard Avoid of the back half of the pavilion tent and a third version was to Hard Avoid the whole roof.

Listening to pre-recorded music and pink noise, the team walked the space and made mental notes of how each version responded. Ultimately, the setting that use Hard Avoid of the stage was preferred by everybody because it gave the most even coverage and the best response throughout the venue along with dying off evenly outside of the lawn area.

Once the sound was directed off the back half of the roof, it brought the PA more into focus and it lost more of the reflections and the sound of the room disappeared even more.