MT. CRAWFORD, VA BASED AUDIO PRODUCTION COMPANY, Southard Audio provided a Turbosound Flex Array PA system for the Rockingham County Fair, held at the Harrisonburg, Virginia, Fairgrounds in August.
The County Fair has been delighting families with traditional fun and entertainment since 1949, with spectaculars ranging from motocross and professional bull riding to demolition derbies, truck and tractor pulls… and of course top quality, award-winning country music.
Production managers Jason Misterka and Mike Southard report that country music stars Eastin Corbin, Tyler Farr, Alan Jackson, Kelli Pickler, Old Crow Medicine Show and Chuck Mead drew crowds of between 5,000 and 7,000 concert-goers each day of the festival.
The main Turbosound PA consisted of 14 TFA-600HW three-way Flex Array boxes flown per side, with six per side TSW-218 double 18-inch horn-loaded subwoofers deployed in a cardioid array.
The TFA-600H is a compact trapezoidal bi-amped/tri-amped three-way mid/high enclosure consisting of a 1" high frequency compression driver on a Dendritic horn, a 6.5" high-mid frequency driver on a patented Polyhorn™ device, and two Turbo-loaded 10" low-mid frequency drivers. It combines a Dendritic HF waveguide and a midrange Polyhorn™ together in a single physically aligned, equal path length waveguide with 100° horizontal dispersion, ensuring a phase-coherent wavefront at the horn mouth.
The outfills were catered for by Aspect TA-880H three-way mid/highs, and the whole system was powered by Lab Gruppen PLM-series 10000Q, 14000, and 20000Q models.
According to Southard, the choice of Flex Array was down to the 100° horizontal coverage pattern provided by the TFA-600HW wide dispersion model line array. "The coverage from the box suited the audience space well and provided more than sufficient level to meet the potential volume requirements for this show." he says. "Once the system was aligned and tuned, we had even coverage and rarely saw a limiter on the Flex Array.
"Flex Array rigs quickly and easily, and fits well with our custom Under Cover rain bags – which are acoustically transparent and keep the boxes dry – as this region is known for large late summer thunderstorms several times a week," explains Southard. "What do I like about Flex Array? Plain and simple: sound pressure level. A lot of line array boxes of this size sound great, but this is a mid-sized line array that performs like a full size box!"
