Putting a Lid on It

Could new relief for an old concert-noise problem in Orange County be spelled V-DOSC?

Maybe.

Although the 18,765-capacity Pacific Amphitheatre continues to collect dust at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, fair officials are hopeful that ever-improving sound technology might enable them one day to use the facility for big-name concerts again--without disturbing neighbors.

The innovative French-designed PA system called V-DOSC got good marks when it was tested during the fair’s 1995 run, when rock, pop, country and oldies concerts were held in the amphitheater instead of the old, 5,000-capacity Arlington Theater, where they have been staged before and since.

“It was very successful in terms of providing a quality experience for attendees, and it kept the sound within the facility,” fair General Manager Becky Bailey-Findley said recently.

She said the fair is about to launch a two-year study that will provide “a thorough analysis of all the fair’s facilities.” That would lead to recommendations on “how best to use all those properties,” including the Pacific Amphitheatre, which began drawing complaints about concert sound spilling into neighboring homes almost from the day it opened in 1983. There are no plans to use the amphitheater for anything before that study is done, she added.

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V-DOSC is a hot commodity in the rock concert sound world because, its advocates say, it directs and controls amplified music more precisely.

“It’s definitely a breakthrough,” said Mike Stall, general manager of Burbank-based ATK Audiotek, which supplied sound equipment used for those 1995 fair concerts. The company used a V-DOSC system at the Super Bowl in Atlanta and uses it for the many awards shows it works, including the Oscars, the Grammys and the MTV music awards.

“It will direct the sound as close as you want to point it,” Stall said. “If you want the sound to stay within five feet of height because there’s a big concrete wall behind the seats, I can aim a box at the row of seats below the wall and it will stay there. I don’t think it’s the be-all and end-all of [speaker] cabinets, but it’s definitely the next step up on the ladder.”

“It sounds simple, but the idea is to direct the sound where you want it, and not where you don’t,” said Bruce Jackson, Barbra Streisand’s sound engineer.

Streisand doesn’t use V-DOSC equipment, but Jackson said he recently tested V-DOSC and several other “line array” systems--which align all speakers for more accurate sound dispersion--for possible use in the Olympic Games in Australia. He concluded that V-DOSC did “an excellent job projecting and controlling the sound.”

Other companies’ line-array sound systems also are more accurate than PAs of old, but V-DOSC’s manufacturer and users say it does some things others can’t.

V-DOSC uses specially designed speakers and cabinets that generate a massive cylindrical column of sound that functions as though it emanates from a single point. Traditional PA systems create multiple sound sources that can overlap and interfere with one another.

“Imagine you have a handful of pebbles, and you throw those pebbles in water. Think of all the ripples they’d make, creating chaos and an array of circles. It’s the same thing with sound,” said Jeffrey Cox, founder of Oxnard-based Cox Audio, the exclusive North American manufacturer and distributor of V-DOSC.

“With V-DOSC,” Cox said, it’s like “taking a stone with the same volume as all the pebbles and throwing it in the water--you get a single wave of water radiating from that intersection of the stone.”

Some high-profile acts--Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Tom Petty, Ricky Martin, Metallica and Bob Dylan among them--use V-DOSC systems on tour and tend to be effusive about the results.

“It produced some of the best concert sound I’ve heard in my life, and some of the best work I’ve done in my career,” said sound engineer Robert Scovill, who used a V-DOSC system last year on Petty’s tour. “I wouldn’t say it’s groundbreaking, but it is challenging to the old-school methodology.

“The proof is in the pudding,” he said. “It’s one of the few times I’ve ever been out on tour where I’ve had absolute laymen come up and ask ‘What’s going on? Why does this sound so much better?’ This was from fans to promoters to critics--definitely not technically oriented people with agendas.”

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While V-DOSC can create a field that envelopes concert-goers with evenly dispersed sound, volume drops off markedly outside that area, sound experts say.

“It gives very predictable coverage,” Scovill said. “Down to a small degree you can walk in and out of the coverage. . . . whereas with traditional arrays you get ever-expanding coverage, and it’s harder to keep it off surfaces you want to keep it off of.”

During 1995 shows in the Pacific Amphitheatre that used V-DOSC, Bailey-Findley said, “the sound was kept well below” restrictions that volume not exceed an average of 50 to 55 decibels in surrounding neighborhoods, or 86 decibels at the top of the berm behind the amphitheater’s grass seating area.

What kept fair officials from using the amphitheater after that was a third restriction of 92 decibels at the mixing board, written into the 1993 sale contract when the fair paid $12.5 million to buy the amphitheater back from the Nederlander Organization, which built and operated it under a 40-year lease with the state-run fair.

The 92-decibel limit was thrown out in 1998 by an Orange County judge while the fair was fighting a suit brought by Nederlander. That suit was settled before a jury turned in its verdict, and Nederlander agreed to pay the fair $16 million.

“The Orange County Fair could have run shows there and had a beautiful place,” sound engineer Stall said, “but by that time, the neighbors were so incensed” that it was impossible, Stall said.

New technology, however, might enable music and the Pacific Amphitheatre’s neighbors to peacefully coexist some day.

“To us, it seems that sound technology is improving every day,” said Fair General Manger Bailey-Findley. “We’re hoping there’s something that will come along that can make it even a better experience.”

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Crank It Up, Dude

The V-DOSC speaker system creates a wedge-shaped audio wave that delivers clearer, louder and stronger sound, according to the manufacturer. How the system differs from traditional set-ups:

Traditional Set-up: Multiple sound waves overlap and conflict

V-DOSC System: Single sound source aligns, separates frequencies

Source: Cox Audio

Graphics reporting by BRADY MacDONALD / Los Angeles Times