Nashville-based live production and integration company CTS AVL provided sound reinforcement for this year’s commencement ceremonies at Vanderbilt University with several systems incorporating JBL Professional VTX Series loudspeakers and more.
The university celebrated the class of 2023 with several events and smaller gatherings ahead of the main ceremony, with poor weather conditions forcing the ceremony to be moved to Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena less than 24 hours before the event. This change meant that the CTS team needed to design and deploy an indoor audio rig on short notice after already assembling rigs for the Alumni and Commons Lawns.
“This was our third year in a row that we’ve done the graduation ceremonies for Vanderbilt,” says Mike Taylor, vice president at CTS AVL. “We have typically done this in their football stadium and in their basketball gym, but both of those venues were not available this year because they’re both under construction. So the university planned to host the ceremonies in Alumni Lawn and the Commons Lawn. And, well, weather happens — when the weather was coming down the pike as a potential problem for the day of the undergrad commencement, we started to functionally work on a plan a few days out, but the university did not want to make the call to move locations until the morning before. Sure enough, they made the call the day before at 10 am. The graduation started at 8 am the following day, so we had to basically put together a third system at Bridgestone Arena in 22 hours.”
For the main commencement ceremony, both the audio rig for Bridgestone Arena and original rig at the Alumni Lawn primarily utilized VTX V20 line array elements as the main PA, wing and delay loudspeakers. “The V20 has been really successful for us overall,” Taylor states. “When it first came out, we adopted it early and bought over 140 of the boxes. We think the mid-sized box is better tuned for vocals, which is a lot of what we do as a company. Vocal clarity is more important to us than loudness, but the V20 luckily has both. It’s basically a staple of all of our installs at this point.”
Other loudspeakers in the rig included VTX G28 subwoofers that provided extra low end impact for videos and music cues as well as VTX F12 multipurpose loudspeakers serving as monitor wedges and VRX932 line arrays for the frontfill sections.
“There wasn’t a lot in the ceremony that needed a ton of low-end out in the arena,” adds Taylor. “It was just for some walkup music and things of that nature when you just need a little extra low-end. The G28 is great because I could take six of them where I might need eight to ten of another type of sub. As for the F12, it’s got the same high-end dual differential drive as the V20, so they’re voiced the same. It creates a nice, seamless transition when you’re moving from mains to wedges.”
The Commons Lawn, which was used for Graduates Day festivities the day before the Commencement ceremony, utilized a smaller but similar rig that included VTX F12 and G28 loudspeakers. The main difference was the use of the VTX A8 line arrays, which provides optimal output and horizontal coverage up to 110 degrees in a compact enclosure. “The Commons Lawn was a little bit smaller of an area, with probably about a 2,000-person capacity,” Taylor explains. “The A8 makes sense for this kind of setup since weight was a big concern. We couldn’t put very much weight on the rig and V20s were going to push it over the limit, so the A8 proved really useful.”
