The venue's "stage" is an arc of gently ascending steps on which the performers stand, covered toward the rear by an eyelid-shaped choir shell. The shell faces out to a sloped seating area, extending some 750 feet deep and about 500 feet wide.
The choir shell accommodates what consulting sound system designer and long-time Meyer Sound associate Dave Dennison describes as "probably the biggest choir on the planet," which performs at the Festival's finale. The choir members come from all over the country, rehearse for a couple days and then perform, By the end of the festival there were 20,000 people singing at one time under the choir shell.
The Festival system was designed using Meyer Sound MAPP Online acoustical prediction software. "I've always found MAPP to be a real saviour," Dennison says. "I do a lot of gigs with limited setup time, and being able to do MAPP before arriving on the scene has been a huge help."
The main arrays, which consisted of nine MILO cabinets on each side, were hung from 2 100-ton cranes positioned behind the shell and extending over the performance area. Four M2D compact curvilinear array loudspeakers were added to the bottom of each side's cluster for front fill forward of the mix position, which was about 180 feet back from the stage. "We had plenty of power from the arrays and never hit limiting," Dennison says. The mains were supplemented with four delay towers, spread wide, used for coverage starting from about 100 feet behind the mix position. Each tower had 4 MILO units. Eventech's Andrus Arba took care of FOH duties, while the equipment manifest also included Schoeps microphones and Midas consoles
(Jim Evans)
