APG Provides Uniline For The Cognac Festival

30 July 2010 11.53 BST

Organisers of the 13th Cognac Festival (la Fete du Cognac), the Association Fete du Cognac, called on local rental company Atlantic Sono to supply and run all of the audio equipment, who partnered up with Alpha Audio to provide the main PA and stage monitor system, all comprised of APG equipment.

The festival was originally born of an initiative from a group of young winegrowers wanting to boost the profile and celebrate what is, after all, the world’s most famous brandy. The four-day festival which took place on the marina in Cognac in south-western France attracted some 15,000 visitors from July 8-11 who came to savour the local gastronomy and listen to music from some of France’s most reputed artists. 

Atlantic Sono’s Yann Henard explained that the festival has been growing in size and popularity every year, and this year they required a much bigger and more powerful sound system than in previous years. To meet these requirements, Yann turned to Philippe Marlingeas of Alpha Audio who supplied a powerful Uniline line array system from APG. “I’ve known Philippe for years, and we often work together on big events like these,” commented Yann. “I have complete confidence in him and his team, although I confess I was curious to see how the Uniline  system would perform, as it was the first time I’ve worked with Uniline.”
 
“Saying that, I was already attracted by the sheer quality of the flying system and the way the loudspeaker units themselves had been conceived to deliver the maximum performance,” admitted Yann. “Just by looking at it, I felt it would work, and it does far more than just work; it’s precise, powerful and functional. The system we had in Cognac was more than enough to delight the ears of both our audience and clients. The visiting engineers who used the system were equally impressed, as indeed they were by the SMX15 stage monitors.

"With this type of equipment, you simply need to have ears and to know your job, and you’re guaranteed a successful show! Big thanks to Mathieu from APG, by the way, we appreciated his both constant good humour and his competence.”
 
Alpha Audio’s Philippe Marlingeas was equally pleased. “The Uniline system did an excellent job once again in terms of throw, SPL, and delivering smooth and even coverage throughout. The UL115B is a particularly impressive cabinet for my money. I was also pleased with the performance of the SMX15 stage monitors. We had a lot of compliments from the musicians who appreciated the fact that they could achieve high levels with zero distortion, and found that the ease of implementation of the multi-angle system was really useful.

"On a personal note, I’d also like to add that I was very impressed by the new DX15 which we used as front fill on stage. It’s a superb complement to the SMX15 as it has a very similar tone, but in a much more compact, low-profile package. To be perfectly honest we did our very best to destroy the one we had on test by driving it to the absolute max with a big Lab.gruppen FP10000Q amp, the amp went into the red, but the DX15 didn’t budge, so we bought some!”

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