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3G Live And L-Acoustics 'Rev Up' The Coliseum At Reventon

Reventon, the largest Latin rock and pop music festival in the United States, recently packed nearly 50,000 enthusiastic fans into the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to watch RBD, Ricky Martin, Alejandra Guzman, Sin Bandera and seven other hot Spanish-language acts perform a non-stop afternoon and evening of high-energy live music.

Arcadia-based Spanish Contemporary Hits radio station KSSE 'Super Estrella' 107.1 FM, which has hosted the annual event since its inception in 1998, has typically staged Reventon at Anaheim's Arrowhead Pond in the past. However, after selling out last year's show in less than 15 minutes, the decision was made to finally move it to a much larger venue, namely the Coliseum.

Reventon 2006 also marked the seventh year that the production team at 3G Live has provided staging, lighting, and sound for the event. Considering that the attendance was expected to triple this year, which it did, the company chose to deploy a massive concert sound system featuring more than 200 L-Acoustics enclosures, some of which were cross-rented from three fellow V-DOSC Network Owners - Rat Sound, U.S. Audio, and L.A. Cobra Sound.

The main left and right FOH arrays were comprised of 16 V-DOSC a piece, while each of the side hangs, angled out approximately 45 degrees, utilized nine V-DOSC sandwiched between six dV-DOSC - three on top and three below. A total of 68 SB218 subwoofer enclosures were spread out along the front of the stage to deliver low-frequency reinforcement, as were four dV-DOSC to provide frontfill.

Twin delay arrays of 16 KUDO each were flown a short distance behind the FOH mixing area and, like the side FOH speaker arrays, were hung at 45 degree angles to address the rear left and right crowd sections. A six dV-DOSC cluster stacked on a six-foot scaffold provided additional coverage for the rear center section, while 16 more subwoofers set up at the delay tower kept the low end tight at the back of the venue.

Up on the turntable stage, which revolved so that one act could be setting up while another was performing, the company positioned two dozen 115XT HiQ monitor wedges - 12 per side - with two dV-SUB on each side for drumfill. Three ARCS enclosures per side, flown horizontally, plus two subs were further utilized as sidefills.

All of the L-Acoustics loudspeakers - house and monitor systems alike--were powered by the manufacturer's LA Series amplifiers.

"This was actually the third year that we've used L-Acoustics loudspeakers for Reventon," says 3G Live crew chief and systems engineer Curtis Zavodny. "The client has been so pleased with the sound each year we've used them that I don't think they'd let us use anything else even if we wanted to!"

Zavodny attributes part of the loudspeaker system's success to L-Acoustics' real-time, 3D acoustical modeling software, SoundVision. "Julio Valdez, another one of our systems engineers, spent about four hours walking around taking measurements of the Coliseum, which we mapped out in SoundVision," he says. "The software proved to be extremely precise and accurate. After setting up the system on-site, we walked up to the top 'nosebleed' seats, then from side to side, and finally all the way down to the front, and the coverage was consistently even, just as the design program had predicted."

The use of SoundVision also helped minimize the setup time for the sizable rig. "We knew going in exactly where and how everything would need to be flown or stacked, which was good because we weren't given as much as we would have liked. We essentially started setting up at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, and by 6:00 p.m. - eight hours later - we were running signal through the system. It was pretty amazing. Bands started soundchecking the very next day. Of course, we had a good crew to get that much work done in that amount of time, but I was still impressed with how fast it all came together."

The visiting band engineers that came in to mix on the system gave 3G Live nothing but compliments--many mixed with a sense of awe. According to Rudy Rosales, FOH engineer for Sin Bandera, "When I first arrived at the venue and saw the rig, although I couldn't wait to hear that 'monster', I was a bit overwhelmed. That was a lot of loudspeakers and subs! But when I started to do my mix, I was amazed at how little I had to touch my main EQ. The system had a really good frequency response, plenty of power, and I liked it very much."

Zavodny echoes Rosales' point about equalization: "Although I always run a Smaart analysis of the system, I consistently find that there's very little that I ever have to do in the tuning process to really make the rig shine. If you follow L-Acoustics' recommended procedures, the system is designed to sound great from the get-go. This year's event reiterated that fact. The only thing that I used our processors for was to add just a very small amount of time delay on the side arrays and subwoofers. Other than that, I made no EQ adjustments whatsoever to the system.

"The way that Dr. Heil at L-Acoustics has configured the DOSC waveguide provides such an accurate and smooth response on the top end that other boxes simply don't have. It's a beautiful sound. I've heard a number of engineers say that the cabinets they use sound harsher but are louder, which to me is crazy because I had zero complaints about SPL at this show. Nobody ever said it wasn't loud enough!"

The bottom line, according to Zavodny, is that L-Acoustics "makes the best products and provides us with the best support. Why would we ever want to deal with anyone else?"

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3G Live And L-Acoustics 'Rev Up' The Coliseum At Reventon

2nd October 2006

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