"We've had two audio engineers and a truck following the governor around the state since about six weeks before his election," says George Edwards, Sound On Stage general manager. "They've provided sound reinforcement for everything from his inauguration party to countless public appearances, including a recent stop at Boeing in Long Beach."
It was this visit to Boeing's Hangar 3 that presented several interesting challenges. Edwards explains: "The governor chose Boeing's factory as the site for signing a landmark workers compensation reform bill (SB 899) in front of nearly 3,000 union employees. The manufacturer wanted to use a bright yellow C-17 cargo transport plane as the backdrop for the event so it was imperative that our system be as unobtrusive as possible and not block the view. The low profile of the dV-Doscs made them ideal.
"The other issue was that this hangar was 1000ft wide by over a mile and a half long, so it was a tricky acoustical environment. The campaign guys recommended that we do three rows of proprietary delays. We suggested that delays would muddy up the sound and that it would be better to do a stereo array with dV-Doscs on the front left and right and just add a few front-fills. They agreed to it but were more than a little nervous. So the first thing they did when they arrived was run a CD through the system set to warp nine. They couldn't believe it; they were totally knocked out. They had never heard anything like it before in their lives, especially in an airplane hangar! It was quite impressive and our employees called us to say how glad they were to be using dV-Dosc."
Edwards recalls his first experience of L-Acoustics: "Four years ago, Jerry Pfeffer, our CEO, and I heard J.D. Brill mix The Eagles on V-Dosc at a corporate event and it was as if we had gone from listening to a cassette player all of our lives to a CD through a pair of Heil speakers with really smooth air motion tweeters. We had never heard a real stereo image like that come from a rig before and knew that was the direction we needed to take our business. Every experience we've had with our dV-Doscs and V-Doscs since then has only reassured us why we bought the product. These loudspeakers have literally changed our lives."
(Lee Baldock)
