Soundvision: Main Hang Design Guide 2 of 8

Reference: SV-HANG-01. This is the loop you repeat for every main hang, in every venue: site it, aim it, let the software suggest splay, assign amps, then sanity-check what it actually gave you before trusting the coverage map.

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Place & Aim the Hang

Add the array, set its element count, and set hang height with real clearance in mind (lights, LED, other rigging) — not just whatever clears the model. Name each side as you go (e.g. left/right) — it saves confusion later, though the exact names don't matter as much as being consistent. Work from the speaker's point of view when deciding which side is left vs. right, not the audience's. Decide your site: aim toward the edge of the coverage area (often the back wall or last row), and pick a reference point for judging trim — a position roughly a third of the way back in a mid-size room is a reasonable default front-of-house reference. On long throws (roughly 80m+), expect meaningful vertical spread at the far edge even before any delay rings are added — check the calculated spread at your actual throw distance rather than assuming the aim line is a hard edge. On an asymmetrical room shape (oval, fan-shaped, one side deeper than the other), the outer-ring elements may need slightly less splay than the raw suggestion — triangulate against the actual far corners, not just the centerline.

SPL Target, Auto-Splay & Optimize

Set the SPL target curve — flat is the standard starting point; only slope it if you have a specific reason to. Run auto-splay/optimize, then check the resulting flatness across the coverage area. Re-run initialize/optimize again if the first pass looks rough — it's normal to iterate a couple of times. In parallel, go to electronic settings and run auto filter — running it alongside the splay optimization tends to give a better combined result than doing them as fully separate passes.

Amp Assignment

Open the impact points view and add them — this is what actually shows you which elements are grouped onto which amp channel. Maximum assignment gives every element its own channel (most control, most amps needed). Custom lets you pair or group elements onto shared channels — useful when you have fewer spare amps than the maximum would use. If you change the assignment, recalculate — the splay/level solution is channel-aware, so a new grouping needs a fresh pass. Many crews place their P1 network processors at the start of the amp chain (before working further down the daisy chain) — a reasonable default unless there's a specific reason to place them elsewhere.

Sanity-Check the Result

Don't judge the design from a single averaged SPL map. Step through a few individual center frequencies to see where it's actually stable vs. where it just looks smooth on the broadband view. Turn on step mode at 6dB. It's a coarser view than the default gradient, and coarser is often more honest about what you're actually going to hear as distinct level differences in the room. Remember the elements are omnidirectional — the waveguide merges multiple omni sources into a pattern, it isn't a laser pointer. As a sanity check, mute down to a single element: even one box alone can cover a whole small venue reasonably evenly at low frequencies (with more directional control appearing only as frequency rises), which is a useful reminder of how much of the "control" you're seeing comes from element count and phase relationships, not aim.

Ground-Stacked PA in Small Rooms

When stacking rather than flying, use the maximum practical splay angle across the stack, then dial back from there — a ground stack that starts under-splayed rarely improves by making changes in the wrong direction. Check for near-field overshadowing. Audience members standing close to a ground-stacked array (roughly within a couple of meters) can lose a large amount of level simply because the stack physically blocks its own coverage down at head height — model listener height explicitly rather than assuming the coverage map applies right at the box. If overshadowing shows up, a pedestal/podium (raising the stack even a modest amount) can measurably recover that near-field loss — cheaper than adding more boxes to compensate.

Source: adapted from a purchased L-Acoustics Soundvision video tutorial series. Rewritten and condensed into a quick-reference workflow in Ryan's own words from the source material.