Aug 19, 2008 12:50 PM

Tim McGraw performs on the VIP Stage

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 Frito’s Style Sonic Stage

“The Versarray’s dual ribbon high-end gives us very high fidelity, and we’re getting throw even beyond what we need,” says 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.”

Engineer Dave Albro

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 ground stacked 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,” Albro continues. “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 1x12-inch 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.”

For more information about Peavey's Versarray system, visit Peavey's Website.

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