Live Events

Design=Success for Father’s Day Bash

WCCC-Building-SatelliteIf you have ever been to the South Barrington campus of Willow Creek Community Church, you know that their grounds are beautiful and extensive.

When planning this year’s Father’s Day event, Willow Creek asked us to design a system that would allow the music and announcements coming from the DJ area to be heard all around the perimeter of their massive building.  In addition to a huge coverage area with lots of turns and obstacles, a major priority was having as few cables on the ground as possible.  With hundreds of people walking the campus, keeping trip hazards to a minimum was paramount.

After discussing several audio designs based on satellite images of the campus, the next step was a site survey.  The satellite view didn’t do a good job of showing a lot of the foliage in the area, and it didn’t give a hint of the hilly nature of the terrain, and the site survey allowed us to refine our design taking these issues into account.

Besides the main DJ system, we had to distribute the same program material playing on more than 10 speaker locations along a U-shaped path that stretched roughly 2000 feet around the Willow Creek buildings.

With local power available at many of the speaker locations, we decided that using point-to-point wireless systems with a variety of specialized antennas was the best way to go—reducing trip hazards and decreasing setup time.

Signal was sent via hard line (run across the roads in cable ramps) from the main console to two wireless transmitters.  From there, the signal was broadcast to the other speaker locations, often being relayed multiple times from one speaker location to the next.

On the day of show, it took our crew of three most of a day to get the system up and running, despite having to work in rain for the first three hours.  We ended up making one small change to the location of one of the speakers, but for the most part implemented the design exactly as we planned it.

This was a challenging, but very interesting project to work on. Design and advance preparation paid off.   The sound was crystal clear, even with wireless transmissions over 500 feet.

If you have a live event needing audio support, please contact our General Manager, Jeff Cech, at 847.367.9588 or jc@tcfurlong.com.

A Successful Opening to the Outdoor Event Season

MS event 2013 1364Live music can add a lot of energy to an outdoor event, especially when the music is provided by a big, enthusiastic band that is thrilled to be performing.

This was certainly the case at our one of our first outdoor events of the season—the National MS Society’s annual 5K Walk.

The Exceptions, a band made up of Northern Trust employees, played three sets of classic rock and soul hits. Featuring 5 horns, a full rhythm section, and a whopping 8 vocalists, the band skillfully and joyfully greeted the Walk’s participants with songs from Chicago, Aretha Franklin, The Doors, and Guns ‘n’ Roses, just to name a few.

Better audio by design: our system consisted of (2) MacPherson M2X and (1) Meyer 650-P per side, mixed side-stage on a Yamaha LS9-32. The relatively small PA kept the music loud and the energy high for the people in the stage area without interfering with the tents and kiosks farther away from the stage.

Participants of the event could enjoy the music up close, while still being able to enjoy the rest of what the event had to offer.

Marylin Aikens, VP at Northern Trust, and our contact for this event, said:

“Thanks for an incredible job provided by [TC Furlong Engineer] Luke Walchuk, in his sound support of the Northern Trust Exceptions Band, in conjunction with the NMSS Walk.  The sound was so crisp and clear, between the singers, drums, guitars, horns, etc.  Everything was absolutely perfect.  Luke was a wonderful resource; his professionalism and know-how took our entire event to another level”

Beautiful weather combined with a worthy cause, a great band, and a solid audio design made this event a successful opener for our summer outdoor season.

For help with audio production at your next event, please contact our General Manager, Jeff Cech, at 847.367.9588 or jc@tcfurlong.com.

Last-Minute Design Changes Don’t Stop the “Dances”

Assad Brothers

Classical guitar duo, the Assad brothers, and Grammy Award-winning woodwind player, Paquito D’Rivero, recently performed their show, “Dances From the New World,” in a concert setting, and TC Furlong provided a full audio rental system, along with audio engineers and system techs.

Last-Minute Audio Redesign

The original stage plot and sound requirements from the performers had, in place of a conventional PA system, one small speaker in front of each performer, which would provide excellent localization for the acoustic instrument performers.

Our design included Meyer UPJ-1P speakers, laid on their sides and with the “VariO” horn rotated for proper horizontal coverage from the 80×55 degree horn pattern.  Several layers of black Duvetyne cloth were laid on the wooden stage surface in front of each speaker reduced reflections and resulting comb filtering.

However, upon arrival the performers decided to change the setup to a more conventional left-right pair of main speakers and floor monitors.  We already had a pair of Meyer CQ-1 speakers set up as mains for voice reinforcement, and moved those closer to the performers and further upstage than usual.  This configuration helped with the localization of audio.

The UPJ-1P speakers were repurposed as monitors and as front-fills for the front center seats.

A Natural Sound

Along with the audio localization concerns, the performers were very specific about the mix being as natural as possible.

During the show the guitars were only brought up to the level of the clarinet, and mixed closer to their natural sound level during the first part of the show when the clarinet was not on stage.

Remote Mixing

Instead of an iPad with the Yamaha StageMix app, a small netbook computer with Studio Manager was used to remote control the LS9-16, with a Griffin Powermate USB knob.

With the Studio Manager software our engineer was able to use the trackpad to set the mouse pointer on any on-screen knob and use the Griffin Powermate to control that virtual knob very precisely.  This allowed access a much wider range of controls than the iPad Stagemix application.

Gear List

  • Meyer Sound CQ-1 main speakers
  • MacPherson M2X balcony fills
  • Meyer Sound UPJ-1P monitors and front fills
  • Neumann KM184 cardioid condenser microphones
  •  Yamaha LS9-16 digital console with Studio Manager and Griffin Powermate

If you need sound reinforcement in Chicago, the Midwest, or Nationwide, please contact our General Manager, Jeff Cech, at 847.367.9588 or jc@tcfurlong.com. 

Photo Credits: Northwestern University/Pick-Staiger, Scott Helmke/TC Furlong Inc.

All Acoustic, All Flamenco.

PacoPenaAdding sound reinforcement to a concert hall designed for acoustic performances is always a challenge.

Recently, a touring flamenco performance group, headlined by guitar virtuoso, Paco Peña, came to a concert hall in Evanston, and TC Furlong provided a complete sound reinforcement system.  Having worked in that space before, we were aware of the acoustics and the design of the room.

This was a case where less was definitely more.  Bringing too powerful of a PA system would result in a muddy sound in this extremely reverberant space.

With this in mind, we designed a system with a single Meyer CQ-1 and 650P subwoofer per side as our main PA.  The front two rows were covered with Meyer UPM-1P front fills.

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