Studio Berar of Serbia recently provided live sound reinforcement for “Homeland,” an historic concert featuring pop star Zdravko Colic. Held at Marakana, Belgrade’s famed Red Star soccer stadium, “Homeland” drew an audience of more than 75,000 fans. The show featured a JBL audio system including VerTec VT4889, VT4888 and VT4888DP line array loudspeakers.
With an audience area that extended up to 140 meters from the stage, Studio Berar needed a loudspeaker system that would provide adequate coverage across a large surface area. To meet this challenges, Studio Berar arranged a VerTec line array system featuring 16 VT4889 line array elements for each of the main P.A. hangs, 12 VT4889 line array elements for out-fill arrays and an additional four VT4888DP line array elements per side for extreme side arrays. Additionally, two delay towers of 12 VT4888 line array elements and two more delay towers of eight VT4888s each were set up in the seating area. Studio Berar incorporated inventory from VerTec owners Joker Media (Bulgaria) and BV Music (Slovakia) for the large-scale event. G-Lec from Germany and Visual Power from Hungary were engaged to support the extensive use of video and LED technology.
“The setup, assembly and tuning of such a large, complex sound system was a serious task for our team,” notes chief system engineer Zoran Matic. “We received valuable assistance on the system design and configuration from JBL engineer Mark Bailey. We designed control and monitoring aspects of the JBL VerTec line array system by using Harman Professional’s System Architect software with new presets, which JBL has been working on. This enabled us to operate the system more easily and to save time while adjusting the system. The results of this mutual work were beyond excellent and I can say with pleasure that a very successful project is now behind us.”
According to Zoran Djurovski, FOHe engineer, “This event clearly showed that advance preparations and pre-production are important components leading to the success of such a major project. The design and setup of the sound system was a great challenge because of the size of the stadium. I’d like to praise the entire team that worked on the project, who did a great job. The proof of this is the enthusiastic reactions from the audience in the far north stands of the stadium [opposite the stage]. They fully enjoyed the concert although their seats were farthest from the stage.
“As for the JBL VerTec system, it completely fulfilled my expectations” Djurovski continues. “My main dilemma was to choose between a ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ character for the sound, as Zdravko’s music is classical pop, but also the production contains a mixture of slower and up-tempo songs. Due to the size of the open stadium space, I chose a bit ‘harder’ mixing style, and both the audience and the musicians were more than satisfied.”
For more information on Studio Berar, visit www.studioberar.com. For more information on JBL, visit www.jblpro.com. For additional SR news, visit The Briefing Room.
