CXD Archives - Techrep Marketing

West Virginia State Fair leans on QSC and Worx.

By : Chris Bednar
In : Blog,Commercial Sound,Speakers,Technology News
Comments : 0

Deep in southeastern West Virginia is a little place called Lewisburg, which is home to the magnificent West Virginia State Fair. When the Fairground Event Center began looking for a way to deliver exceptional audio content across the expansive fairgrounds, it met many challenges. To cover the areas between buildings they needed high output, high fidelity devices that could endure sustained inclement weather ranging from rain to snow and extreme cold to direct summer sun. Not only that, but the distances between buildings on the grounds presented an additional challenge concerning the needed distribution of audio and control, in order to deliver the required features.

To tackle these issues the Fair, with the help of Charles Hatcher at Alpha Music in Lewisburg, decided on QSC’s Q-SYS platform paired with Acoustic Design Series AD-S12s and PreSonus’ Worx Audio Stadium Series weatherized arrays.

To address the geographic challenges, switches were placed around the fairground at the amplifier locations. Fiberoptic links connected each location because copper data networks could not traverse the required distances.

A single Q-SYS Core110f is doing all the audio routing, as well as control and monitoring of the system, while the Q-LAN network feeds CXD4.5Q amplifiers around the fairground. This is a testament to the power of the small, but mighty Core110f. The processor is mixing and routing sources to all the outputs, as well as handling array processing and all the user control interfaces for the entire fairground!

Users access zone controls, source selection and monitoring via a Q-SYS User Control Interface. Those controls are accessible from anywhere on the grounds via an iPad.

When it came to moving the air around the fairground, PreSonus Commercial came out of the gate swinging with their Stadium Series weatherized X2 and X5 arrays. The X2 and X5 are high performance, all-in-one line array systems. These systems take the design principles of a flexible array and build them into a single optimized system. The Worx arrays deliver full bandwidth, dynamic playback of music at impressive distances.

With the arrays in place, Tony Flammia of PreSonus Commercial took measurements at the convergent points of the many sources. Q-SYS processing aligns those sources so that regardless of the listeners’ location, they only appear to be listening to one source.

The team that made this project possible included people from Techrep Marketing, Alpha Music, PreSonus and The West Virginia State Fair. This is a perfect example of how a system can be very lean, with minimal hardware, minimal points of failure and still deliver a premium user experience.

www.qsc.com
www.commercial.presonus.com
www.statefairofwv.com
Alpha Music on Facebook

Mt Olive Cathedral – Memphis, TN

Originally constructed in 1905, Mt. Olive Cathedral in Memphis Tennessee just underwent its second renovation. When church leadership set out to modernize the facility, they wanted to blend the old with the new keeping the charm of the original space. Mount Olive chose Dill Audio of Jackson, TN to do the install and Tim Dill himself was the design lead on this project. He decided to stick with an all QSC speaker, amp and processing solution. For the main PA, Tim selected a 5-box QSC KLA Line Array system supplemented by a KW181 subwoofer. The folks on stage are hearing themselves via a pair of AP-5122m monitors at the stage lip while the choir gets their feed from a pair of AP-5102s mounted to the wall at either side of the stage. The AP Series can provide high fidelity, dynamic sound at high output.

The under-balcony and narthex areas are also covered by QSC, using the Acoustic Design Surface Mount Series. The AD-S6T offered a very clean looking solution that sounded great and was easy to install using the X-Mount mounting system.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about this whole system is that every speaker in the facility, except for the KLA Arrays and sub, is being run by a single amplifier. Tim chose the CXD4.5 to drive the monitors, under-balcony and narthex speakers. The built in DSP offered Dill Audio the ability to quickly set up speaker voicings, limiting and protection using QSC’s intrinsic correction filters.

This is a beautiful example of what is possible with the complete QSC solution. The system looks fantastic, sounds great and has a minimal visual impact. The entire audio system only has 6 different products in it!