The Southern Okanagan Events Centre in Penticton, BC (Canada), recently hosted a live performance by legendary comic Bill Cosby on a Friday night and a high-energy rock concert called “Hot Summer Nights” the following Saturday, with both performances handled by the same sound reinforcement system headed by Martin Audio line arrays, loudspeakers, monitors, amplifiers and processors.

Local audio provider Northwest Global Entertainment of Kelowna, BC, was confident in the capabilities of the system to provide premium audio quality for the diverse requirements. “These were two completely different events back to back, but we were able to leave the same rig up overnight, which is unusual,” explains Steve Williams, president/production manager of Northwest Global Entertainment.

The Martin Audio rig for both shows included two main hangs of eight W8LCs with three W8LMs and a transition bar underneath per side, plus 12 WSX subwoofers They were joined by four Martin Audio W8Cs for side fill and four W8LMs for downstage lip fills. Onstage monitors included 12 LE1200s.

New Martin Audio MA 5.2S and MA9.6K digital power amplifiers were used for mains, with MA4.8Qs deployed for biamp monitors, while Martin DX2 loudspeaker management systems were used for main PA processing.

For the “Hot Summer Nights” concert performances, mixing consoles included a Digidesign Profile for concert headliner Marianas Trench, and a Midas Verona for supporting acts Faber Drive, Latency and Armchair Cynics.

Bill Cosby did two shows the first night, utilizing a Countryman headworn microphone, offering humorous observations and chatting with the audience. The main challenge for Williams and the sound crew, which included Production Manager/FOH Engineer Christoph Mayer and System Tech Perry MacDonald, was overcoming the reverberation of the site, a hockey rink that doubles as a multi-purpose music venue.

According to Williams, “The venue had some coverage issues in the upper VIP and private box seats because of the reflections. Mr. Cosby required clear vocal reproduction at every level so we trimmed the rig using DISPLAY software, and the W8LC/W8LM combination provided exceptional coverage throughout the entire venue.”

“The ‘Hot Summer Nights’ concert was like going from 0 to overdrive between nights. We hadn’t needed the subs for Cosby, so we used those but the basic speaker configuration didn’t change other than some minor tweaking coverage wise.”

The crew for “Nights” included Headliner FOH Engineer Rob Nevalainen, Production Manager and Monitor Engineer Christoph Mayer and Perry MacDonald and Jose Antunes as system techs.

Commenting on reactions to the Martin Audio rig, Williams concludes, “Wall M Entertainment was the promoter for this event and their representative Nigel Whatley said he’d never heard a sound system in that venue sound so good. He was thrilled with the quality and the artists were pleased with the Martin Audio rig as well.

“Overall, the W8LCs sounded phenomenal out of the box. This concert was the debut appearance for our new W8LC system that we got only a few days prior to the concert.

“We’re extremely excited to be able to feature this new W8LC system for our clients in our territory and expect that the W8LC rig will be a great compliment to our inventory of W8LMs and WSX subs. We are looking forward to unleashing the beast on several upcoming major events in our market”.

Martin Audio Website