"Jazz World is generally regarded as the musicians' stage," according to APR Audio's crew chief Matt Gunter. "This is where the real musical talent plays, and I suppose we do go the extra mile for them. But this stage is respected by the performers, engineers and audience because of the consistency of the sound. Jazz World uses the same PA every year, and we bring good experienced crew. We saw the noise police only once - we ran at 96dB all weekend, and had no problems at all."
For the main PA, Shuttlesound's Jason Kelly helped design a system using EV's X-Line XLVS and XLVT cabinets flown from 16m towers, with 28 X-Subs deployed in 2-wide, 6-high stacks, plus four for centre-fill. EV's new XLE cabinets provided front-fill, and the system was run from EV's Precision Series P3000RL amplifiers.
"We used EV's dedicated IRIS management software to control the system, but kept it very plain and simple, mainly to keep the levels in touch." At front-of-house, the main console was a Midas Heritage 3000, with a Venice 160 used as a main control to drive the system. EQ was provided by Klark-Teknik DN370 for grab EQ on the H3000 and DN9344 for the main system.
On stage, APR Audio provided EV XW15A wedges and X-Array cabinets for side and drum-fills. All speakers were run from Klark Teknik DN9848 digital system controllers, and monitored via KT's Elgar control software. Monitor engineer Laurie Brace had just a PC next to his Heritage 3000 mixer, allowing him to tweak the inputs.
"We had some very positive comments from band engineers, production and audience alike," reports Gunter. "Despite the weather, the system performed flawlessly. We used 16m towers this year and a different deployment of the X Subs that allowed us to focus as much sound as possible in the Jazz World field and that helped us to keep both the band engineers and the noise police happy."
(Jim Evans)
