Tim McGraw’s Live Your Voice Tour has chosen the ribbon-loaded Peavey Versarray line-array system for two stages on the country-music superstar’s 2008 North American dates.
Dave Albro—a veteran live-sound engineer whose mixing credits include Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and Roy Clark—and A2 Devan Skaggs are running two separate Peavey Versarray systems for Road Dog Touring, one configured for the Frito’s® Style Sonic Stage and a second system on McGraw’s VIP Stage.
Designed to entertain audiences during pre-show festivities on the midway, the Style Sonic Stage features twin hangs of six Peavey Versarray VR112™ line-array enclosures, paired with three Versarray VR218™ subwoofers and powered by a quintet of Crest Audio® Pro 5200™ and Pro 8200™ power amps.
“The Versarray’s dual ribbon high-end gives us very high fidelity, and we’re getting throw even beyond what we need,� said Albro. “I’m only using four of the six VR112s because the top two boxes are actually throwing several hundred feet into the residential areas neighboring the venues.
“We configured a constant-curve arrangement, so the degree between each pair of boxes is the same and I can leave it set and transport the boxes just like that. It comes out in a tray of three boxes facing each other and I hook up the first three, lift them up, add the second set, put in the three pins and fly it out. It’s very simple and quick to fly.�
Tim McGraw’s VIP tent stage is a specialized venue where McGraw performs an acoustic set for a select group of fans before his main show. Albro and Skaggs arranged a Versarray setup that is nearly identical to the Style Sonic Stage, although trimmed to a 3:1 cabinet/sub ratio and groundstacked to achieve optimum sound coverage in the intimate setting. Like the Style Sonic system, a Peavey VSX™ 26 loudspeaker manager is assigned to each line-array cluster enclosure and pre-loaded with the Versarray Project Eight System factory preset.
“After working with the Versarray system during pre-production, I knew what to expect out of the cabinets,â€? commented Albro. “If I find myself doing a particular EQ adjustment in a certain situation, then I’ll just build that right into the program in the VSX. Right now, the VSX units are doing crossover and some time alignment between the ribbons and the 1×12â€? woofer. There’s a little bit of EQ going on in there—some parametric stuff to shape the crossover points, because the beauty of digital crossovers is that you can do all of this asymmetrical stuff and create a flatness that you couldn’t do in the old analog days.â€?
The Versarray 112 ribbon-driver line array utilizes a high-performance, lightweight 12� Neo Black Widow® woofer featuring a 4� voice coil with a neodymium magnet structure in a 13-ply Baltic birch enclosure. The Versarray 112 offers extreme versatility and performance in modular coverage of small- to medium-sized venues, and is intended for use with Versarray 118 or 218 subs, two vented subwoofers incorporating Peavey’s ultra-high power Lo Max® 18� woofer.
The VR218 subwoofer features the patented UniVent™ venting system, which uses an exclusive process to literally pump air through the enclosure, maintaining cool operating temperatures, increasing reliability and reducing power compression under heavy continuous-drive conditions. Peavey’s patent-pending Ram Air Cooling™ design, a dissipation process that radiates heat away from the voice coil and speaker cone on the VR112, helps achieve enhanced efficiency and power handling, and overall improved performance over conventional cone-type transducers.
Founded in 1965, Peavey® is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of musical instruments and professional sound equipment. Peavey has earned more than 180 patents and produces more than 2,000 products, which are distributed throughout the United States and to 136 other countries. Peavey and its MediaMatrix®, Architectural Acoustics®, PVDJ®, Crest Audio® and Trace Elliot® brands and affiliates can be found on concert stages and in more than 5,000 airports, stadiums, theme parks and other venues around the world. To find out more, visit www.peavey.com.
