At a recent Naval air show, five Peavey power amps and a series oftwo-way, 12-inch woofer-outfitted enclosures backed the roaring BlueAngels and the U.S. Navy’s finest pilots at Wings Over Meridian (Miss.)2004, held April 17-18 at Naval Air Station Meridian.
Relying on Peavey Impulse® 1012 enclosures and GPS® 3500power amps, senior Peavey clinician and veteran live audio guru MartyMcCann assembled an effective, fully distributed audio system that cutthrough the din of jet engines from World War II-era planes topresent-day bombers.
By placing the 31 total loudspeaker enclosures at 50-foot intervalsalong the crowd line—one power amp for every sixspeakers—McCann could deliver the audio feed at a consistentvolume level. “At air shows, you can always hear the system, but it maybe too loud in certain spots or it may be hard to understand because ofa time lag between the clusters and fill speakers,” said Marty Papizan,civilian electrical engineer at Ground Electronics, NAS Meridian. “Withthe system Peavey came up with, no matter where you’re at, you won’tget more than a 22-millisecond delay in sound. That’s naturalreverb.”
Running 31 loudspeakers in parallel along the 1,600-foot perimetercaused a natural voltage drop, which McCann countered with the GPS 3500amps and a series of line transformers. “We had to put 400-watttransformers at each speaker to counter the drop in voltage so everyspeaker sounded the same and put out the same volume,” said Papizan.Each of five GPS 3500 power amplifiers provided a 100-volt distributionline to power six Impulse 1012 loudspeakers.
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