Known for his seven years as FOH for Van Halen, Jim Yakabuski hasrecently worked for Avril Lavigne and Matchbox Twenty. He is also theauthor of Professional Sound Reinforcement Techniques, availablefromwww.artistpro.com.
“In large halls and arenas, line array systems can helpachieve even front-to-back SPLs and frequency response. Here’s a tipfor smoothing level and tonality when using ‘old-school’systems; i.e., horizontally arrayed columns of speakers. Assuming thesystem can be divided [electronically] into a top [long-throw] andbottom [nearfill] cluster, start your tuning process by balancing andEQ’ing only the top section along with the sub-bass and get that rightat the back of the hall. Once that’s done, blend in the lower sectionof speakers [usually at a lower volume and smoother EQ] to make up forwhat’s missing up front.”