Sound Reinforcement for CU 2017 Graduation Ceremony

Providing sound reinforcement for graduation ceremonies.

This event proved to be a challenging yet extremely rewarding one. Our good friends at Blazen Illuminations hired us to help supplement sound reinforcement for the Colorado University of Boulder’s 2017 graduation. The main graduation takes place in Folsom Field, afterwards each college breaks out and hosts their own graduation ceremony

We were excited for this event because it would be the debut of our recently purchase QSC Wideline8 System. However, debuting this system in a tent is far from ideal.

One of my concerns was having ample gain before feed back and smooth even coverage from front to back.  The front row was roughly 10 feet from the loudspeakers and the back row was roughly 80 feet. From front to back I had the potential loss of 18dB! Based on the inverse distance law, which states a loss of 6dB every doubling of the distance.

Although tents are not acoustically ideal, they proved to act in our favor for speech. The reflective surfaces, and domed tops acted as a natural horn for our loud speakers. The PA was made up of four Wideline 3082 per side, sitting atop a single WL212 and two GP218 dual 18″ subwoofers. The subwoofers were mainly used as stands to get the array to the needed height. Using EASE we focused the array to nearly flatten out on the top two boxes. In the photo above, the minimal array curve is shown.

With the predicated coverage in EASE and the reflective surfaces of the tents the coverage was beautiful! From the front row to the back speech was crystal clear and intelligible. This was also the case with soft talkers, a type of person I’m always concerned about at speaking events, such as graduations.

Overall it was a successful event and the Rockfan Team worked hard and delivered another great production! Both of our stages utilizing this QSC Wideline8 configuration received praise for clear, intelligible sound throughout the tent. Our other 2 stages outfitted with QSC KLA12’s went off without a hitch as well! Thanks again to Blazen Illuminations and RC Events for the opportunity!