Riding high on this year’s Best New Artist Grammy and in support of 2008’s double-platinum The Foundation and its half-dozen number one singles, Atlanta-based Zac Brown Band (ZBB) continues to sell out larger venues.

I caught up with them at the end of an East Coast run of the “Breaking Southern Ground” tour for a sold-out show at Charlotte’s 19,000-capacity Verizon Wireless shed, supported by Jim Brammer’s Special Event Services (SES).

Those unfamiliar with Zac Brown are quickly disarmed by his honesty and generosity. Instead of attending last spring’s Academy of Country Music Awards, he took his band on a USO tour to the Persian Gulf.

In Charlotte he thanked his band and crew from the stage not once, but several times for their hard work and dedication.

This tour marks the North American debut of the new Martin Audio Multi-cellular Loudspeaker Array (MLA), with SES carrying two dozen MLA mains and a dozen MLX dual-18 subwoofers.

The crew arrived a couple hours late for a 9 a.m. load-in due to an overnight from the Blossom Music Center outside of Cleveland, combined with bus trouble, but they easily had everything in the air by lunch time.

MLA is self-powered, with individual or “cellular” processing of drivers, allowing precise, complex settings derived from Martin’s Display 2.0 modeling software.

MLX subs incorporate a 4.5 kW Powersoft DSP amplifier module, while the full-range MLA cabinets employ a 6-channel amp. (Click here for our “First Look” from LSI on MLA technology.)

The system comes not just with fly bars (with integral inclinometer sensors), but also a Lieca Disto D8 laser, a tablet PC and a WiFi router. Martyn “Ferritt” Rowe of Martin Audio used the laser to measure the venue’s cross-section and entered dimensions into the Display 2.0 software, which first provides cabinet angles and then a preset for the desired optimum coverage.

The system adopts the “just say no to zero degrees” approach, with minimum cabinet splay of 0.5 degrees. For this shed show, the settings were five 1’s, two 2’s, a three and three 4’s - less than a traditional system might employ.

Rather than simply rely on physical curvature and zonal processing of traditional modular line arrays to create an isophasic wavefront at the array, MLA uses moderate bend and networked, component-level DSP to create response that is isophasic at the listener’s ear. Ferrit demonstrated, entering either 1.6 meters for standing or 0.8 meters for sitting audience.

The Display software helps the system engineer trade off three priorities: smoothness of frequency response, evenness of coverage, and leakage out of the listening area (often lobing).

Leakage can take on a higher priority in sheds where it’s helpful to reduce bounce off a metal roof. MLA delivers amazingly consistent frequency responses and sound pressure levels over a wide audience area.

It is uncanny walking 200 feet from the front to the back of a shed and only hearing no discernible tonal change or difference in level.

It takes about 20 minutes for a Compaq nx9420 3GHz/2MB dual-core laptop running the Display software to crunch out a 500 KB preset for the system. After transfer to a USB thumb drive, the file is uploaded to the array with a WiFi netbook running Martin VU-NET control software.

Discover the art of sound through insightful and in-depth coverage of the people, technologies and ideas that are transforming the professional live audio world.
Subscribe today!