A cross-country tour to over 60 large-scale venues including a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden has seen country music star Dierks Bentley confirming the success of his most recent studio album, The Mountain. The tour also marks a13th year on tour with Dierks Bentley for FOH and System Engineer James ‘Pugsley’ McDermott – but the first using PK Sound Trinity Advanced Robotic Line Arrays.
‘It’s been a technological advancement not only in deployment, but also sonically,’ he says of the new PA, which features full-size main hangs with up to 16 Trinity boxes on each side of the stage, plus a dozen Trinity 10s for side hanging and front fills.
The tour crew also flew six Gravity 218 subwoofers per side, with an optional six per side on the ground, which were used in different configurations to fit the size and shape of each venue.
McDermott believes that the addition of Trinity loudspeakers has brought the Dierks Bentley sound system to another level, giving the crew added flexibility to control the contours of the soundfield, especially in the mid and high frequency ranges – granting the crew increased three-dimensional sound shaping capabilities, and allowing them to fit the sound field to any venue’s dimensions using PK Sound’s Kontrol software. ‘Every Trinity box can be whatever you want it to be,’ he says.
While a 120° dispersion pattern can be an asset in some venues, it is too wide for others. Accordingly, Trinity’s adjustable soundfield enables the system engineer to tailor each individual box to be as wide or narrow as is needed for the venue. ‘Each box can be set from anywhere between 50° and 120°, and you can use them symmetrically or asymmetrically,’ McDermott confirms. ‘I was having problems with a side-hang blowing into a video wall to the side of the audience, and all I had to do was just close up the boxes that were pointed at it, and that solved the issue.
‘Once you start eliminating reflections and getting the rig to run efficiently instead of having to fight the reflections and fight with the room, that’s where the Trinity really shines, because you have the ability to take the room out of the equation.’
Production Manager Jay Ballinger – who, like McDermott, has been on tour with the Dierks Bentley road crew for more than a decade – reckons Trinity to have increased the crew’s efficiency by streamlining the rigging process, from load-in, to system setup, load-out and transporting to the next venue, making the whole process safer and faster. ‘I love how it flies vertical with the touch of a button,’ he says. ‘And with the built-in mechanics, it brings itself into curved position for the show.
‘Trinity takes up less space both in the truck, as well as on stage and in the wings. The tour has cut its cable trunks by more than half, and we went from full-size cable trunks to half-size ones. Plus, it’s safer, because there is nothing to get your fingers stuck in.’
Ballinger notes that, on this first tour with PK Sound’s more efficient line arrays and subwoofers, his crew managed to gain 40 minutes in their day: ‘In a nutshell, it was about the bottom line. This is not a cheap PA, but at the end of the day it saved on touring costs, and it saved our crew from potential injuries, as well as truck space, weight, and fuel costs.
‘The real reason I fought for this PA is that we want the best gear we can get for our tour and our team,’ Ballinger concludes. ‘I want them to have the best tools to do their job, and this is the best PA out there, in my opinion.’
More: www.pksound.ca
