Rock 'n' Road Audio of Tucker, Georgia, supplied the sound for the event. Rock 'n' Road's Roy Drukenmiller and on-site production manager James (Jid) O'Brien worked with Nashville's Spectrum Sound and Blackhawk Audio to ensure there would be enough powerful hardware to guarantee a splendid time for all.
On the Miller Lite/99X/Comcast Stage, alt-rock ruled with a lineup that included the Pixies, Lemonheads, White Stripes, DEVO and Keane performing through a substantial array featuring 34 MILO and four MILO 120 expanded coverage high-power curvilinear array loudspeakers, as well as two dozen 700-HP subwoofers.Four MSL-4 long-throw loudspeakers provided frontfill. FOH engineer Tommy Rodgers drove the mix using a Yamaha PM1D digital console, with loudspeaker processing courtesy of an LD-3 compensating line driver.
The Hooters/Kicks 101.5 stage featured an all-star country lineup including Alan Jackson, Jo Dee Messina, Keith Urban, Trace Adkins and Cross Canadian Ragweed. FOH engineer Mark Archibald used a pair of UPJ-1P compact VariO loudspeakers as reference monitors for the mix coming from the Yamaha PM5D digital console and bound for 20 MILO cabinets and 14 M3D-Sub directional subwoofers.
"With a festival as big and musically diverse as Music Midtown, we knew we could count on Meyer Sound for a solution for every stage," Drukenmiller reports. "The MILOs have the high end we needed for clarity, and the 700-HP subs gave us that all-important thump. The self-powered aspect is very important too - on the 99X stage we went from two trucks of cabinets last year to one this year."
(Jim Evans)