Special to the Star



MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — Hard Rock Park, the world’s first rock ‘n’ roll theme park, is a multifaceted musical experience that brings to life the iconic music that changed the course of music history and continues to influence generations of music fans.

Located in the Atlantic Coast resort town of Myrtle Beach, this $400 million music fan’s dream boasts themed rock ‘n’ rollercoasters like “Led Zeppelin: The Ride” and “Eagles: Life in the Fast Lane” among its 50 rides and attractions, and dedicates entire sections of the park to pop-music movements such as the British Invasion, ‘70s era rock and country music.

Peavey, an icon on the music-products side of the biz with 43 years of innovation and more than 180 technology patents under its belt, worked closely with Hard Rock Park and systems integrator Electrosonic to create an unparalleled music experience. As the first new major attraction built in the U.S. in nearly a decade, Hard Rock Park benefits from the evolution of technology manifested in the Peavey MediaMatrix® NION® audio distribution system, the ribbon-loaded Peavey Versarray™ line array and the Crest Audio® Pro 200™ Series power amplifiers. The largest segment of the Hard Rock Park project is the background music and paging system, which consists of a cadre of nine MediaMatrix NION n3 processors that configure and control more than 130 zones of audio covering the entire 55-acre park.

“There are a dozen stage areas throughout the park where a band can set up and plug a mixing console into the MediaMatrix system,” said Tim Smith, Project Engineer at Electrosonic. “Because there are no more than six speakers to each zone, we have the flexibility to narrow the system for live shows. The speakers in that particular zone will then switch over to the live show instead of the BGM.

“That flexibility is all enabled by the MediaMatrix NION,” he added. “There is a rather elaborate GUI at the front end that controls everything. The NION has an additional level of sophistication and an open architecture with additional DSP that other gear doesn’t have.”

Three on-site live-show venues—Hard Rock Live as the premier performance site, plus the Roadie Stunt Show, and Malibu Beach Party attractions— are controlled via individual NION n6 processing nodes that talk to the main system via fiber and transfer CobraNet audio and control information in both directions.