Lining the 2.2 mile route, scores of Electro-Voice SX Series loudspeakers were deployed to provide live-to-air commentary, announcements and general sound reinforcement for the biggest crowd ever seen in the event's 23-year history, squeezed into grandstands and along crowded pavements.
Watford-based PA company NSR Communications have provided PA for this event since it started in 1986. By choice and experience, they favour "the workhorse speakers" from EV's SX range for the task, spaced along the route and beside the large grandstands which demark the six 'sites' of the parade including Piccadilly Circus and Parliament Square, where SX300 and SX80 cabinets are used, typically 10 units in each site.
Leader of the NSR Communications team, James Walker prefers to use the SX80s to cover the grandstands themselves, and to aim the SX300s at spectators on the other side of the road. "Leading up to the finishing line, outside the Ritz on Piccadilly, for example, we had 6,000 people on the pavements and in the grandstand, which we serviced with a 90m run of speakers, all running low-impedance."
(Jim Evans)
