News

ATK provides JBL Vertec for CMA Awards

USA - Nashville's Sommet Center arena was a complete sell-out the evening of 11 November 2009 as the country music industry came together to celebrate the 43rd Annual CMA Awards, the Country Music Association's biggest event of the year.

The ABC broadcast saw a record total of 23 music performances on the show by artists including Brooks & Dunn, Kenny Chesney, Dave Mathews, Kid Rock, Lady Antebellum, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood and Keith Urban. All of these performances were presented to the live audience with a large, multi-array JBL Vertec line array system supplied by ATK/Audiotek (Valencia, California).

The event system was designed by Pat Baltzell, principal at Baltzell Audio Design. It included five line array clusters made up of a total of 88 VT4889 full-size line array elements, joined by a separate flown cluster of 14 VT4880A full-size arrayable subwoofers. Four VT4887 compact line array elements were built into the stage as front-fills.

Baltzell and Rick Shiner were co-FOH mixers for the show; Baltzell mixed the performances that used re-recorded backing tracks and mixed all the production dialogue, while Shiner mixed the music performances, all completely live.

(Jim Evans)

(26 November 2009)