Two days before tee off at 7th Ryder Cup at the Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, KY, a black-tie gala was held on September 17 in the 2,400-seat Whitney Hall at the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts. The round of speeches was followed by a performance by country music superstar Carrie Underwood, then dinner and dancing in a large tent to the band Head Over Heels, production services provided by the New Jersey office of NMR Staging and Events.

Held every other year, and every fourth year in the US, the Ryder Cup is one of pro-golf's most prestigious events, with matches between two teams of 12 golfers each — one team from Europe and one from the US — produced by the PGA of America and of Europe. “This was the third Ryder Cup gala we did,” says Ed Conrad, executive director of staging and events for NMR worldwide. “We started doing site surveys in Louisville over two years ago and liked Whitney Hall. It has ample rigging, a good fly system, and is centrally located to the team hotels. It can also handle big-name artists, with ample dressing rooms.”

Lou Castellucci, director of audio services for NMR, served as audio engineer, while Mitch Grant, of Oceanside, CA-based Special Event Audio Services, was the audio systems engineer for the gala. The audio design for Whitney Hall allowed for 24 inputs of video, myriad wireless mics, recording/playback functions, and outputs for both the live audience and broadcast recording decks. By using EtherSound technology, Castellucci was able to keep the audio fully digital by sending eight channels of EtherSound out of the console to NEXO GEO D line arrays (18 modules per side) via NEXO 242 digital processors.

“Since we already owned the EtherSound Cards for the NEXO NX242s, it made sense to have a digital board that could handle the EtherSound outputs as an option,” Castellucci explains. “My DiGiCo console allows me to keep my drive-lines from the desk to all the digital processors, and to control all the processors and console via a Dell Precision laptop running Auvitran ESMonitor software — no more having to go out to the racks and change my processor settings manually.”

As Whitney Hall has two balconies, Grant found the NEXO line arrays a good choice. “The height of the space could present problems for even coverage from top to bottom,” he says. “The GEO D line array, even with 18 speakers per side, was not obtrusive or too dominant in the space. These cabinets sound much bigger than they look.” As a result, Grant did not need to add fill or delay for the balconies but did use NEXO CD18 subs, four per side. Underwood's FOH engineer, Rob Rankin, brought his own Midas XL4 analog console and ran his outputs into the DiGiCo board so that Castellucci could maintain ultimate control.

Out in the tent, for the dinner/dancing part of the evening, Mitch Grant used a different approach. “The challenge, as in any tent, is that you can't fly too much weight from the structure,” he notes. That called for ground stacks of loudspeakers, including NEXO's Alpha E system (two S2 sub woofers, two B1-18 mid-bass speakers, and two Alpha EF per side) plus ground-stacked GEO D line arrays (four per side) as outfills, used with a Yamaha M7CL digital console. “We wanted to make it sound warm and involving but not too overwhelming for the people up close. The NEXO Alpha E speakers excel in that environment,” says Grant.

As for the very different parts of the evening, Grant sums it up by saying, “Two different situations called for two different solutions, but they both worked very well.” Not only was the event a success in terms of design, but it also served as a lucky charm for the entire US team.

AR LIST

WHITNEY HALL SOUND SYSTEM
NEXO Geo D Line array PA (18 per side)
NEXO CD18 Subs (four per side)
NEXO NX242 signal processing via Digigram EtherSound, with Auvitran card

TENT SOUND SYSTEM
Yamaha M7CL console
NEXO Alpha E speaker system per side:
2 S2 subwoofers
2 B118 mid-bass speakers
2 Alpha EF
Yamaha amps (T5N and T3N)
NEXO Geo D line arrays (4 per side)

For more information:
Lou Castellucci
e-mail: lcastellucci@nmrevents.com
NMR EVENTS