Mixing a jazz festival is a specialized art, of which Audio Incorporated vice president
Mike Sinclair is a master. For the past ten years, the Roselle Park, New Jersey-
based firm he runs with partner Stephen Tolve has provided the sound for the
annual Freifhofers Saratoga Jazz Festival, with Sinclair mixing front-of-house for
many of the acts. “Jazz audiences are totally unforgiving,” notes Sinclair. “With
jazz, it’s especially important that the PA sound transparent, as if you were listening
to the band without a PA. Renkus-Heinz VL3 self-powered line arrays deliver that
clear, transparent sound, which is one reason we chose them.”

The Saratoga Performing Arts Center is an indoor-outdoor amphitheater, “basically
a concert hall without walls,” offers Sinclair. The home of the New York City Ballet
and Philadelphia Orchestra, as well as the Saratoga Jazz Festival, it’s shaped like a
curved bowl and rises 100 feet high.

The system Sinclair selected for the 2015 Saratoga Jazz Festival consists of a 12-
cabinet Renkus-Heinz VL3 “J” array on each side of the stage. “The ‘J’ array has
constant curvature; none of the cabinets are at zero to each other,” explains
Sinclair. “And we rig it as high up as we possibly can so that we have the top box
pointing up at the balcony and the bottom box pointing down at the third or fourth
row, so it’s almost overhead. That way, we get complete coverage, other than a
few front fills.”

Renkus-Heinz’ VerSys VL3 is an integrated, self-powered, 3-way line array system
with dual 1,000 watt, 12-inch neodymium woofers. It can deliver more than 133 dB
SPL and requires minimum setup time. Smaller than comparable large-format line
arrays, the VL3 works with Renkus-Heinz’ RHAON system-manager software and is
designed for applications like the Saratoga Jazz Festival, where outstanding sonic
performance is a must, and sound level and coverage needs can’t be satisfied with
a conventional horizontal array.

Sinclair likes to mix most of the Jazz Festival acts at around 103 to 105 dB SPL.
“That’s a good sweet spot for this kind of music,” he explains. “Now, at the end of
the day, with the headliner, you have to be able to go to 105 dB, with peaks at 110,
and the Renkus-Heinz system is amazingly flexible in that respect. It retains its
musicality through a very wide range of levels.”

In the first year with a new system, one might expect the festival’s artists and
engineers to be sceptical, but that was not the case. “The reception for the VL3
system was unbelievable!” Sinclair exclaims. “We got no pushback from the
engineers or artists. In the jazz world, Renkus-Heinz is a name that has some
‘juice.’ Almost unanimously, the response was ‘wow, I’ve heard about these arrays;
this will be fun!’ And all day long I had engineers coming in while I was mixing the
show, and their reaction was just fantastic, exactly what we wanted: It sounds
natural and transparent.”