CTS Audio, based in Franklin, TN and one of the early adopters of Harman JBL Professional’s VTX Series line arrays, recently added 100 more to its inventory. The company now has 108 V20s plus another eight V25s, as well as a bevy of VTX F Series F12 loudspeakers.
CTS Audio first put the V20 to the test at the recent 2014 K-Love Fan Awards, held at Nashville’s Opry Hotel and featuring top Christian artists such as Michael W. Smith, Steven Curtis Chapman, Amy Grant, Scott Stapp, Sidewalk Prophets, and more than 40 others.
“Based on our experience with the VTX Series V25 and S28 subwoofers, we didn’t think we were going out on too much of a limb with the V20s, which we were interested in for their smaller size and which would give us a more flexible loudspeaker inventory that would be adaptable to a wider variety of venues,” says Mike Taylor, vice president at CTS Audio.
Taylor and his team first traveled to JBL headquarters in Northridge, CA to give the V20 an audition, hoping to hear big sound from a more compact loudspeaker. “We listened to six of the boxes from 200 feet away and were amazed at how much clean, powerful sound the V20 put out,” Taylor says.
At the K-Love Fan Awards, CTS flew 10-deep V20 arrays over four S28 subwoofers on each side of the stage, complemented by two F12s per side for out fill. The loudspeakers were driven by 24 Crown I-Tech 12000 HD amplifiers, and CTS used JBL HiQnet Performance Manager for system setup and control.
“We’ve used the Crown amps with the V25 line arrays and Performance Manager on dozens of events, so the transition to the V20 was pretty close to effortless in terms of setup and calibration,” Taylor notes. “The sound we achieved was stunning, absolutely stunning. The headroom with the V20s is really impressive and a marked step up from other loudspeakers that we’ve used in the past.”
Taylor adds that they never came anywhere close to hitting the limiting for the system, and the V20 exceeded their expectations in its ability to fill the Opry with even coverage from the front to the back of the hall, with a smooth tonal balance and impressive dynamics and presence.
