TORONTO — FreedomFest is an annual community event that celebrates freedom and those who have sacrificed their lives maintaining that freedom. Matthew West, the multi-Dove award nominee and sought-after songwriter who catapulted onto the Christian music scene in 2003, headlined the event. Adamson and Hire Company Atomic Professional Audio based in Rutland, Vt., sponsored the 2008 concert sound system. Adamson concurrently hosted a clinic on sound system design and technology aimed for church facilities of all sizes and styles of worship.
The clinic, which was held immediately following Matthew West's sound check on the FreedomFest main stage, featured Benoit Cabot and Adam MacGillivray (Adamson Sales & Support) and covered the fundamentals of system design, demonstration of Shooter, Adamson's sound design software, along with various Adamson speaker products.
Sound design for the entire FreedomFest PA was executed by Jesse Adamson using the Shooter Software and featured 24 Adamson Y18s, eight Y10s, and 12 T-21subs on the ground as the main rig, with an additional four Spektrix Ws as front fills. The PA, which was powered entirely by Lab.gruppen and processed with XTA, was specified by the event Production Manager Brian Haas after hearing it on the Linkin Park Tour. Haas then specifically sought out to replace a competing system used at the event the previous year.
The location and setup included some problem spots, which Haas describes: “Due to the positioning of the stage in relation to the audience field, not only did we have a very wide area to cover, but had to shoot over a crest of a hill. To make matters worse, we were not able to get the full trim height we wanted because of the positioning of the lifts for the PA.” Adam MacGillivray, Ben Cabot and Evan McElhinney (Atomic Pro Audio system tech) spent over an hour tuning the PA.
“They were being more thorough than anyone I have ever seen, and the results were fantastic. They not only attained amazingly even coverage over the crest of the hill, but back beyond the actual seating area with a well controlled drop-off. The horizontal coverage was also remarkable, specifically the coverage of the far side of the field achieved without any additional PA,” he says.
FOH engineer Matt Payne, who mixed on a Midas Heritage, was amazed by the clarity and even coverage of the Y-Axis, and said to be recommending it to a sound company he regularly works with in Nashville. Chris Mertler ran a Crest monitor console.
Greg Herndon, the owner and system engineer for Mojoe Productions who provided all consoles and the monitor rig, was blown away by the performance and ease of setup. He specifically pointed to the T-21 subs and noted, “(Subs) are usually the weak spot in line array systems.”
Next year’s event is expected to be even larger; plans for incorporating some big scale air-shows and cross-over headlining artists in the vein of Chris Daughtry and Taylor Swift under consideration (not yet confirmed), could potentially draw an excess of 50,000 people to celebrate Freedom in the Tampa Bay area.
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