Jericho Horns solve amphitheatre issues
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Rather than replace the failed system with an equally doomed solution, Logic Systems Sound and Lighting completely re-conceptualised the entire approach. They installed four clusters of two point-source Danley Sound Labs J7-95 Jericho Horns each and opted for Danley’s fully-weatherised version that can be left out, not only all summer but, all winter as well, with no ill effects.
“The Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre was on its third lawn sound reinforcement system, and like the ones before it, it had completely rotted from exposure,” explained Chip Self, president of Logic Systems Sound and Lighting. “The boxes weren’t even safe to hang, despite the fact that the owners went through the $10,000 per year expense of removing and reinstalling them for every season.
“They asked us to come out and propose a new system. At first, we thought about it like all of the other contractors who were given the same request: what’s another line array that we can put in the same seven spots to give the folks on the lawn a few more years of decent, but not excellent, sound.”
The Danley solution solved several problems at once. First, technicians wouldn’t need an expensive boom lift to service them; they could just walk across the roof. Second, the old hung line arrays tended to throw energy over the edge of the lawn to annoyed residents on the St. Charles side of the Missouri River.
With Jericho Horns on the roof, the angle would be steeper, and Danley’s pattern control would keep energy contained within the lawn area. Third, mounting the Jerichos on the roof would remove a sight-line issue that was a constant irritation with the suspended arrays.
Because the roof structure makes an excellent wave-guide for low-frequency energy from the band’s PA system, Self didn’t need to add a lot of bass for the lawn system. The newly-introduced Danley J7-95 Jericho Horn, which forgoes the deep bass response of its Jericho siblings in favour of more mid- and high-frequency energy, was selected, and Self purchased the first eight J7s ever produced.
Four Danley DNA 20k4 Pro amplifiers power the system with a total of 80,000 Watts and a full toolkit of transparent DSP resources. A fifth DNA 20k4 Pro amplifier is in the rack as a hot spare.
“The new Danley system at Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre sounds substantially better than any of the previous systems, even to casual listeners,” says Self. “With fewer sources, it’s much easier to align with touring systems, and the Danley boxes and amplifiers have much more headroom than the old system, which was in full limit for every show - and it sounded like it. “
(Jim Evans)
