Part of the San Diego Zoo’s “Nighttime Zoo” summer program, Talamasca—Jungle Myths and Legends, is new jungle-themed acrobatic show at the zoo’s Hunte Amphitheatre. The show runs nightly through September 2. CBC Technical, Inc. provided sound reinforcement for the show, including Electro-Voice XLD very compact line arrays.
“The input end of the show is relatively simple—a DVD player providing four channels of audio along with timecode,” says Scott Chester of CBC. “The steep and deep shape of the venue and noise restrictions outside means a balance of complete, controlled vertical and horizontal coverage and intelligibility is essential—something the zoo felt the program was lacking last year. The XLD is proving the ideal solution.”
Arrays of seven XLD are flown each side, each over two ground-stacked X-subs for low-end support. EV CP4000S amplifiers handle the power, Dx38 the processing. “This whole system is so easy to set up: the flying hardware is great and the boxes sound superb with minimal tweaking—amazing definition and coverage,” Chester adds. “XLD is a lot of loudspeaker in a small package. I attended the show preview, which was attended by the zoo executives. They were all very happy with the sound—they told us it was the best they’d heard in years!”
