VUE China Kicks Off Expanded Market Presence at Grammy Fest, Beijing

al-class line array system powers Recording Academy’s first destination musical festival

May 8th, 2018 – Beijing, China 

In keeping with its commitment to mirror VUE’s soaring worldwide market position in the Mainland Chinese market, the newly expanded VUE China deployed a massive al-Class line array system at the world debut of GRAMMY Festival in Beijing on April 30, 2018. On his very first visit to China in front of a crowd of more than 30,000, GRAMMY-winner Pharrell Williams, mixed by Kyle Hamilton on the VUE rig, headlined the one-day, nine-act festival. The colossal event was held at the outdoor Chang-yang Music Theme Park. Other acts included DAYA, Macy Gray, Phoenix, Carly Rae Jepsen, James Bay, OneRepublic, William Chan and Nicholas Tse. Shanghai-based VUE China partnered with production company Wuhan Blues to provide the system set up.

Situated on the headline side of two 95-foot-wide stages, the VUE rig included two clusters of 23 al-12s, a chest-thumping 28 hs-221 subs ground-stacked in front of the stage, and 12 al-8s stacked atop the hs-221s for front fill. According to Greg Kirkland, VUE’s technical sales manager who was on-site for the event, the al-class array was easy to set up, and delivered consistent coverage throughout the entire 350-foot deep audience field, in spite of some challenges posed by the stage configuration.

“We were forced to fly each cluster 10 feet higher than originally planned to do the placement of the video elements,” explained Kirkland. “When you’re flying most line arrays, an additional 10 feet in vertical distance would pose a coverage challenge in such a large field, but thanks to the use of Berillyum high-frequency diaphragms in the compression drivers, the al-class was still able to deliver much cleaner high-frequency content and cleaner/louder sound throughout the field. In fact, we averaged 105 dB broadband, a-weighted, and had plenty of level to spare. Let’s just say nobody asked for more volume.”

Kirkland utilized SystemVUE network control software to create a virtual arced subwoofer array of the 28 infrasonic ACM subwoofers. providing smooth coverage throughout the audience area. “Thanks to SystemVUE, we were able to access every amplifier on each subwoofer enabling us to enter individual delay times into each sub and to monitor a total of 64 devices from the FOH console. It worked perfectly.”

VUE product used on-stage for Pharrell Williams included a total of eight model al-8 line array elements and two model hs-221 ACM subwoofers. Configured as a pair of side fill monitors, the speakers were stacked four al-8’s each atop of one hs-221 subwoofer per side.

Kyle Hamilton, on a break between Kendrick Lamar’s “Damn” Tour, and his latest “The Championship Tour”, mixed Pharrell William’s headline act on the VUE rig. Now an al-class veteran after the 36-show North American leg of the tour, Hamilton was still impressed with the system’s performance.

“The thing that continues to amaze me with the al-class is its fidelity,” lauded Hamilton. “The highs on the al-12s are clear and clean and totally transparent. It was so cool to deliver Pharrell’s first-ever Chinese performance, and to do it on a rig that I’ve said from the very beginning was going to change the entire game.”

 

 

 

“The thing that continues to amaze me with the al-class is its fidelity. The highs on the al-12s are clear and clean and totally transparent. It was so cool to deliver Pharrell’s first-ever Chinese performance, and to do it on a rig that I’ve said from the very beginning was going to change the entire game.” 

-Kyle Hamilton, FOH Engineer for Pharrell Williams


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