Arcadia-based Spanish Contemporary Hits radio station KSSE 'Super Estrella' 107.1 FM, which has hosted the annual event since its inception in 1998, has typically staged Reventón at Anaheim's Arrowhead Pond in the past. However, after selling out last year's show in less than 15 minutes, the decision was made to finally move it to a much larger venue - the Coliseum.
Reventón 2006 also marked the seventh year that the production team at 3G Live has provided staging, lighting, and sound for the event. Considering that the attendance was expected to triple this year, which it did, the company chose to deploy a massive concert sound system featuring more than 200 L-Acoustics enclosures, some of which were cross-rented from three fellow V-Dosc Network Owners - Rat Sound, US Audio, and L.A. Cobra Sound.
The main left and right FOH arrays were comprised of 16 V-Dosc a piece, while each of the side hangs, angled out approximately 45 degrees, utilized nine V-Dosc sandwiched between six dV-Dosc - three on top and three below. A total of 68 SB218 subwoofer enclosures were spread out along the front of the stage to deliver low-frequency reinforcement, as were four dV-Dosc to provide front-fill.
Twin delay arrays of 16 Kudo each were flown a short distance behind the FOH mixing area and, like the side FOH speaker arrays, were hung at 45 degree angles to address the rear left and right crowd sections. A six dV-Dosc cluster stacked on a six-foot scaffold provided additional coverage for the rear center section, while 16 more subwoofers set up at the delay tower kept the low end tight at the back of the venue.
Up on the turntable stage, which revolved so that one act could be setting up while another was performing, the company positioned two dozen 115XT HiQ monitor wedges - 12 per side - with two dV-SUB on each side for drumfill. Three ARCS enclosures per side, flown horizontally, plus two subs were further utilized as sidefills.
All of the L-Acoustics loudspeakers - house and monitor systems alike - were powered by the manufacturer's LA Series amplifiers. "This was actually the third year that we've used L-Acoustics loudspeakers for Reventón," says 3G Live crew chief and systems engineer Curtis Zavodny. "The client has been so pleased with the sound each year we've used them that I don't think they'd let us use anything else even if we wanted to!"
Zavodny attributes part of the loudspeaker system's success to L-Acoustics' real-time, 3D acoustical modeling software, SoundVision. "Julio Valdez, another one of our systems engineers, spent about four hours walking around taking measurements of the Coliseum, which we mapped out in SoundVision," he says. "The software proved to be extremely precise and accurate. After setting up the system on-site, we walked up to the top 'nosebleed' seats, then from side to side, and finally all the way down to the front, and the coverage was consistently even, just as the design program had predicted."
The use of SoundVision also helped minimize the setup time for the sizable rig. "We knew going in exactly where and how everything would need to be flown or stacked, which was good because we weren't given as much as we would have liked. We essentially started setting up at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, and by 6:00 p.m. - eight hours later - we were running signal through the system. It was pretty amazing. Bands started soundchecking the very next day. Of course, we had a good crew to get that much work done in that amount of time, but I was still impressed with how fast it all came together."
(Lee Baldock)
