Larry Schmidt, owner of Tallahassee, Fla.-based Reel Rock Productions, had a distance dilemma in bringing sound reinforcement to Pete Dye Plaza, an outdoor zone given over to the PGA’s Championship post-match live music and cocktail-oriented events. Schmidt and crew hit the sweet spot of the assignment with the aid of a self-powered ISIS WideLine rig from QSC.
“I mixed for the event at a distance of 300 feet from the stage,” Schmidt says, giving accurate measure to the span between his console and talent up on the risers almost to the inch. “Much like a corporate job, the client requested that everything technical be kept out of sight as much as possible. With the WideLine, everything was equidistant in terms of SPLs. What I was hearing at 300 feet was the same as the sound in the first row.”
Schmidt used a pair of ISIS 215PCM subwoofers left and right, which served as the cornerstones of the self-powered system. Each was coupled with four flown WL-2102 ISIS WideLine enclosures operating in a bi-amped configuration, and the subs and their mated full-range boxes were deployed at a rate of two and eight per side, respectively.
“The weirdness of it all for some behind the scenes was that they kept looking for the amp racks and there weren’t any,” Schmidt recalls. “I can’t emphasize enough the freedom of not carrying separate amplifiers in situations like this. The time and energy savings make it the way to go, while performance remains totally spot-on.”
Using QSC’s QSControl.net network audio system, Reel Rock was able to easily conquer this lengthy stretch with fiber-optic cabling while integrating all system control, monitoring and processing functions with the rig’s pair of BASIS 922az units. “As the processing and signal transport brains behind QSControl.net,” Schmidt explains, “the BASIS units are just a plain better tool. We can do everything with the devices, from limiting and processing to monitoring the performance of individual loudspeakers. We can program an entire system in advance back at our shop and then send it on the road, or tune on-site and then lock our settings down so they can’t be tampered with. If we have to make changes, that’s easily done, too, on the fly and in an instant.
“When we first saw the WideLine boxes, we didn’t know what to expect,” Schmidt concludes. “But having dealt with QSC amps for ages, we knew the company always stood behind its products, so we figured there was something to it all. Upon initial inspection, I was surprised at how small they are. But once we put them up, they knocked me out—they are incredible for their size. The performance and stereo imaging was fabulous, and with the control and monitoring advantages of QSControl.net, the system actually fulfills what many other packages can only attempt to achieve.”
For more information about this install, please go to www.qscaudio.com.
