Albany, N.Y. — For nearly six decades, the city of Albany has marked the arrival of spring with the annual Tulip Festival, a three-day gala in historic Washington Park. Aside from more than 200,000 namesake flowers in myriad colors and varieties, the annual event features multiple stages with live entertainment on the first two days.
After several years of working with various regional sound companies, the City of Albany returned to their original audio provider, Audio 300 Inc., to supply sound systems for the event. The Albany-based company used a self-powered loudspeaker system for the event’s Main Stage based on Meyer Sound’s MILO high-power curvilinear array loudspeaker, part of the company’s line of M Series products.
The Main Stage, located on the park’s Parade Grounds, required a loudspeaker configuration that could smoothly transition from the first day’s bill of rock music to the jazz featured on the festival’s second day. With the aid of the MAPP Online Pro™ acoustical prediction program, Doss built a flexible, powerful system from two flown arrays of 8 MILO cabinets each, with eight 700-HP ultrahigh-power subwoofers evenly spaced in front of the stage. A Galileo™ loudspeaker management system handled system drive and processing, and Doss tuned and aligned the system using a SIM® 3 audio analyzer.
Audio 300 President Michael Doss aimed to streamline logistics for the event. “We’ve been dealing with amp racks for 20 years, and we really wanted to dispense with it all and get a self-powered device, which is part of the beauty of the MILO.”
With a peak attendance of 30,000 listening to an eclectic lineup that ranged from Chris Botti and Under the Influence of Giants to Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Doss faced a number of challenges during the event.
“I was paranoid that we would run out of headroom during the rock lineup because we weren’t anticipating anywhere near that large of a crowd, but we had plenty to spare,” Doss says. “On the jazz day, we had to turn down the subs a tiny bit to accommodate the acoustic bass instruments. Aside from that, we just witnessed the system in action. The MILO system handled both types of material incredibly well, and all artist feedback was positive. Even the vendors, set up 500 feet away, remarked on how clear and natural the music sounded compared to previous years.”
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