FEST-WATCH

LATITUDE
Arguably one of Europe’s most laid-back summer festivals, Latitude — held in July in Southwold’s picturesque Henham Park in Suffolk — has returned growing audiences to the roots of festival culture with its mix of leading-edge rock, theatre, comedy, poetry, readings, film and children’s activities.

    London’s Arcola Theatre, renowned for having the world’s first fuel cell powered studio, took a brave new step in delivering low energy lighting and hydrogen fuel cell power for this year’s Latitude.

    Working with regular partners White Light, Selecon, ETC and Pixel Range, Arcola Theatre provided lighting for the entire Theatre Arena using a mixture of LED and low power tungsten technologies; cutting power consumption by over 70%.

    A 5kW Gencore fuel cell, supplied by London Hydrogen Partnership in association with Logan Energy, powered the lighting rig, with hydrogen provided by BOC. The fuel cell operates almost silently producing nothing but electricity and clean water.

    Arcola has enjoyed great success in delivering low power lighting in its own studios, but Latitude presented new challenges — not least that the theatre tent was not blacked-out so the lighting needed to compete with, or rather complement,
daylight.

    The fuel cell and low energy lighting add to organiser Festival Republic’s efforts to reduce the environmental impact of the entire event, including solar showers and reusable cups.

    Arcola’s executive director, Dr. Ben Todd said: “Latitude is a great opportunity to push the boundaries of fuel cell and low energy lighting technologies in a high pressure daylight environment. By powering the Theatre Arena we demonstrated these technologies, at close quarters, to 20 leading theatre companies and 25,000 festival-goers. We look forward to being part of many more green events.”

    Colour Sound Experiment supplied lighting for seven performance stages and seven areas of the surrounding trees, foliage and greenery — involving over 170 single light sources.

    Highlighting the natural beauty of the location has always been a priority, and Colour Sound now has the lighting scheme down to a fine art, having been involved in Latitude since its start in 2006.

    The key natural features illuminated were two 100m tree lines and a 200m tree line running along one side of the large lake separating the parklands and main arenas from the wooded area, In-The-Woods stages and camping at the back of the woods.

    These were lit with a combination of 58 halogen fixtures, a selection of blue and green 400W Son floodlights, 20 PAR 64s and 15 Studio Due 2.5kW CityColors.

    Elsewhere on-site, Colour Sound supplied more standard stage lighting packages, relying on products from Robe, Pixel Range, ETC, Martin Professional, as well as Avolites consoles.

    Siyan supplied four stages with equipment and crew. These were the main Obelisk stage and Lake, Uncut and Sunrise stages, dotted around the beautiful historic parkland site. Siyan’s choice of fixtures ran from SGM and Martin Pro, through to Studio Due, ETC, Arri, Pixellines and i-Pix Satellites.

    Adlib Audio supplied sound and crew for the third year running to the Lake stage, the Film & Music stage and the Cabaret Arena.

    The Lake Stage was sponsored by the BBC as an introducing platform for new, young and hot emerging talent. Nexo Alpha and proprietary Adlib systems, along with Soundcraft and Camco wares were deployed here, while over in the Film & Music tent, an Adlib FD system was in action, with a Yamaha M7CL console for FOH and another for monitors.

    On duty at the Cabaret Stage was an Adlib FD2 system. A side-stage mix was created on a Yamaha LS9-32 console, and the monitors were the compact Adlib AA121 wedges.

    Eat To The Beat’s team had of 19, on-site headed by Rachel Collins, catered for up to 240 crew and 320 artists, most of whom could not get enough of the famous ETTB banoffee pie!

iTUNES FESTIVAL
W1 Productions gave the highest-profile baptism to the lowest-profile floor monitors — pressing its new Martin Audio LE1500 monitors into service for 31 consecutive nights at Koko in Camden Town throughout July’s iTunes Live: London Festival ’08 season.

    The iTunes Festival included performances from over 60 bands — from established acts such as The Feeling, Suzanne Vega, N*E*R*D and James Blunt to up and comers such as Hadouken! and The Ting Tings.

    Stuart Turvill, who runs Bury St. Edmunds-based W1 Productions, said he had planned to upgrade his hire fleet, which already includes a large inventory of Martin Audio components, “but the iTunes Festival provided the trigger, as we needed to move up to a bigger box.” And so he purchased 14 of Martin Audio’s flagship monitor.

    He added: “These have proved very popular and an amazing showcase for the product, largely due to the impressive sound and curved profile. The bands love them.”

    While all artists performed through Koko’s house system, W1 Productions, which handles all of iTunes’ European production work, also fielded a Martin Audio W3P/WS18 combination for drum fills.

    W1 Productions’ own sound engineers — Alan ‘Nobby’ Hopkinson (at FOH) and Will King (monitors) — provided technical support throughout the entire 31 days.

    In addition to a wide selection of the classic Martin Audio LE12JB floor monitors, W1 Productions has a W8LM line array rig (and WMX subs) as well as W3, W2, W1 and W0.5s in its rental stock.

    The company provides production services for a number of corporate clients including the Disney Channel, O2 and various car manufacturers. It also provided the sound system for last year’s iTunes Festival when it was held at the ICA in London.

    “As for this year, we are really pleased with the results,” said a delighted Turvill. “This was the LE1500’s first major event and many of the visiting monitor engineers said how happy they were with their performance.”

CITADEL MUSIC FESTIVAL
Set to become one of Berlin’s biggest annual music festivals in Berlin, the Citadel Music Festival welcomed well over 100,000 visitors throughout the course of the summer. Over 30 concerts from artists as diverse as Diana Krall and Motorhead took place from May 29 – September 1 against the spectacular backdrop of the old Renaissance fortress on the banks of the Havel river.

    Full service production company, Complete Audio Berlin, supplied all the sound and lighting equipment for the duration of the festival including a powerful Crest-driven Martin Audio PA system.

    According to Complete Audio Berlin’s general manager, André Rauhut, while the Spandau Citadel is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful outdoor locations in Berlin, it is also one of the most technically and logistically challenging. “The first issue was getting all of our gear on to the site — we couldn’t truck it directly to the stage as we normally would as the only access is via a rather narrow drawbridge!” he explained.

    “Once on site, our brief was to provide sound coverage for a 55m x 85m area, bearing in mind that we could be looking at a standing audience of over 10,000 for a gig like Motorhead or Scooter, or just a fraction of that for fully seated events such as classical music or opera. The biggest challenge was providing a system that could handle everything from Rage Against The Machine one night to Gregorian chants the next, and sound good throughout.”

    To that end, Rauhut decided to field his Martin Audio Wavefront W8LC line array system powered by 31 Crest Audio Pro 8200 and 10 Pro 9200 amplifiers with system processing from XTA. A further eight Crest Audio Pro 8200 powered the stage monitor system.

    “It’s a system in which I have complete confidence,” affirmed Rauhut. “It’s an extremely versatile combination, and it sounds great in any situation. I’ve had Crest amplifiers on the system for four years, and the Pro200 Series has proved itself to be one of the most powerful and dynamic amplifier packages you can buy.

    “They certainly bring the best out of the PA, and I think it’s fair to say that these amps deliver performance way beyond what it says on the spec sheet. It’s usually the other way round, but not in Crest’s case!

    “We’ve had — and still have — many different amplifier brands in the warehouse, but Crest remains our favorite. We have a new Martin Audio W8L Longbow system arriving soon, and Crest will be powering that, too.”

GIG MAWR BONT ’08
Cheshire hire company, The Audio Group, recently employed Allen & Heath’s iLive digital system to manage a festival for M.A.D. Sound & Lighting near Aberystwyth, Wales.

    Comprising an iDR10 mix rack and iLive-80 control surface, the system managed FOH audio for the two-day Gig Mawr Bont ’08 event at Pafiliwnbont in Pontrhydfendigaid, which featured 10 top Welsh bands including Huw Chiswell, Sibrydion and Radio Luxembourg.

    Audio Group’s director, Paul Adamson said: “We have been looking to purchase a digital audio system for some time and iLive’s audio quality and features make it very appealing. With everything on board, we don’t need to carry big outboard racks of EQ and FX processing.”

    The iLive system was complemented by a Logic System VA line array at FOH and Logic LM20 monitors, with amplification from MC2.

    “The event manager was anxious at the thought of a digital console at FOH. He asked ‘where’s your multicore?’, and walked away scratching his head when I explained we had already flown the two pieces of CAT5 required off the truss!” commented freelance sound engineer James Jewry, who was driving iLive throughout the festival.

    “We reached sound checks in no time and as I hadn’t used the iLive before on location I was surprised at what was to follow; the audio is rich and detailed, all the onboard FX simulations are superb, and the features and flexibility of the system really impressed me.

    “As soon as you select a channel everything is in front of you, unlike other digital desks where you have to navigate a little to find what you need. We especially liked the mute buttons, which are like those on Allen & Heath’s analogue boards.”

    Jewry concluded: “If you’re thinking of buying a digital board and you dismiss iLive, to put it bluntly you’re either deaf or stupid. It doesn’t sound like a digital board should, it just sounds awesome.”

OXEGEN
Leading Irish rental company Just Lite utilised over 160 Robe moving lights across six stages at Oxegen 2008, Ireland’s largest and highest profile music festival. The firm also provided additional illumination for MTV, who recorded the event for broadcast.

    The Dublin-based company, run by the Smith Brothers, has invested heavily in Robe over the last three years. It has a long history with the festival which is promoted by the dynamic Denis Desmond of MCD, the company that also runs T In The Park in Scotland... on the same weekend!

    Oxegen 2008 was project managed for Just Lite by Ian Smith who commented: “The Robe range has proved ideal for our outdoor season — they’re robust, reliable and they stand up exceptionally well in the weather!”

    The three-day Oxegen festival is staged at Punchestown Racecourse, Naas, County Kildare, and was enjoyed by 80,000 music fans this year. A diverse and exciting line-up included headliners Kings Of Leon, R.E.M., The Verve, Rage Against The Machine and the Kaiser Chiefs.

OTTAWA BLUESFEST
Since starting out in 1994 as a regional blues festival with an audience of 5,000, the Ottawa Bluesfest has grown into the largest blues festival in Canada and the second largest in North America, annually attracting around 300,000 music fans.

    Each year, Wall Sound, Inc. of Ottawa deploys a wide range of equipment from Dynacord, Electro-Voice, and Midas to ensure audio performance is in keeping with the festival’s international stature. This year’s systems included Dynacord Cobra-4 rigs for the Rogers and Roots stages.

    Held in Ottawa’s LeBreton Flats Park from July 3-13, this year’s diverse range of headline acts included James Taylor, Brian Wilson, Fergie, The Tragically Hip, Steely Dan, The Black Crowes, Wyclef Jean, Plain White Ts, Feist, Great Big Sea, Boz Scaggs, The Wailers, Three Days Grace and Donna Summer.

    The Cobra-4 systems offered a compact combination of sonic warmth, intelligibility and exceptional coverage. Dynacord PHW Subs and Cobra-4 Tops were also deployed as side-fills on the Bank of America stage — the largest at the festival.

    Matt Lamarche, general manager of Wall Sound, said: “Our Dynacord Cobra-4 systems have proved themselves time and time again on these stages, providing a level of performance that impresses both the wide range of artists and engineers that perform and work here and their audiences.”

LARMER TREE FESTIVAL
Entec Lighting assisted the Larmer Tree Festival — the UK’s original ‘boutique’ summer event — celebrate its colourful 18th birthday at the weekend, supplying lighting to the main stage, garden stage and several other performance arenas, as well as illuminating some of the fabulous flora, fauna and foliage around the site.

    Run by J&J Events, the five-day festival is set in the heart of the beautiful Larmer Tree Gardens on the Wiltshire/Dorset borders and kicked off this year by Jools Holland.

    This was the third year that the Shepperton-based rental company has been involved with the event, which is limited to an intimate 5,000 capacity and is renowned for its chilled vibes, quality international entertainment and amazing surroundings.

    Entec’s crew of Mark Jones, Doug Flude and Phil Lee were led by Richard Hutton, who said: “There’s something very special and magical about this festival. It’s great to get a chance to enhance the gardens at night with imaginative lighting as well as doing standard stage lighting. We all love working here, it’s a very enjoyable weekend for everyone.”

    The main stage lighting was run by Mark Jones. Entec sub-hung a series of trusses below the 50’ ‘stretch’ Orbit roof supplied by Serious, the idea being to maximise the space and provide as much flexibility to light the massive variety of bands appearing.

    The moving lights here were eight Martin MAC 700 Profiles and eight MAC 250 Washes, joined by eight bars of six PARs, two sets of Studio Due CS4s and two Entec custom crackers to create special haze. Jones ran the lights using a Jands Vista S3 console, its small footprint ideal for the limited FOH tower space. The only visiting LD was Simon Honnor for Jools Holland.

    Six i-Pix Satellite LED fixtures uplit the intricate mural at the back of the original wooden Victorian Garden stage, and there were also two outdoor PARs on a manual dimmer for highlighting the performers, many of whom were DJs.

    The main lawn area was programmed so that as soon as a band finished on the main stage, a DJ or other performance would starton the garden stage, providing a constant stream of entertainment.

    The Big Top was a two-poled tent with a front truss flown from the poles and lights rigged on to upright sections of trussing onstage. Fixtures were MAC 300 Washes and MAC 250 Profiles, Pixellines and 650W fresnels for general stage wash and audience illumination. This was run by Phil Lee and Doug Flude on an Avolites Pearl console.

    One of the most popular performance spaces, the Big Top’s simple lighting was achieved with four six-lamp bars. Two ETC Source Four 10° profiles — also run from the same Zero 88 XLS desk — lit the B stage.

    The retro-rave environment of The Club offered scope for Batmink LED PARs, i-Pix Satellites, Martin DCI disco wheel effects, Pulsar Maxi strobes and a Martin Mini-Star, courtesy of Paul Jarvis from Powerline. This was all run by the DJs via switch pack and/or sound-to-light.

    Consisting of three large Tipi tents, The Social needed some ambient lighting, so the Entec team installed two large red scenic lampshades (from a Blur stage set, circa mid-’90s), some Martin oil wheel effects, strings of blue LED Xmas lights and a mirror ball lit with i-Pix Satellites.

    The brief from organiser James Shepard was to light key elements of the gardens utilising as many low power light sources as possible, so Entec supplied a selection of MBI and LED fixtures to meet these requirements.

    Six CityColor 2.5kWs, 40 400W MBIs in a random mix of white, green, blue and sodium, approximately 30 LED PARs, four SGM Geneo LED bricks and 12 UV bulkhead fixtures were used to light the woods.

    The CityColors were used to highlight the tree line around the main lawn and were hooked into Mark Jones’ Vista console.

VIÑAROCK
Beginning with a few hundred music fans in 1996, the Viñarock Festival has grown to become one of Spain’s largest summer festivals, attracting close to 100,000 people to the city of Villarrobledo this year.

    The three-day event brought together more than 90 artists ranging from hard rock and hip hop to jazz and world beat, with two adjacent stages keeping the music going non-stop through a Meyer Sound system for 10 hours each day.

    As Jorge Riego of Baeza-based Tuá Pro explained, the logistics of providing powerful coverage across the expanse of dual stages required special care. “The use of a single PA system for two stages created the need to cover an area 80m wide, providing 170m of throw, with two separate FOH mix positions. Needless to say, it was not your typical sound system,” he said

    Riego’s design comprised three 15m high towers, each using 24 Milo line array loudspeakers, with one array on each side and a third between the two stages. Thirty-six 700-HP subwoofers were groundstacked in pairs along the edge of the stage to cover low frequencies.

    “All the band technicians were asking about the subs,” said Riego. “The comment I heard numerous times was, ‘I can hear it with my body!’ It really sounded divine.”

    The configuration also included eight UPJ-1P VariO loudspeakers providing frontfill, with a Galileo loudspeaker management system using two Galileo 616 units supplying the processing power to handle the unorthodox configuration.

    “The power of the MILO system was truly amazing,” Riego remarked. “During the Sociedad Alcoholica set, I measured 127dB at FOH, and the system was telling me I still had headroom! With Meyer Sound you really have no limits, whether you’re doing opera, rock or death metal.”

BRIZEFEST
Top UK music equipment distributor John Hornby Skewes & Co. Ltd. made a significant contribution when it loaned RAF Brize Norton an HK Audio Cohedra line array system for the recently-held, first-ever BrizeFest music festival at Brize Norton, an event arranged specially for family and friends of those who work at the RAF station.

    Held on June 21 at the RAF’s famous base, the event coincided with the force’s Families Day. A good response to the festival line-up saw over 5,000 people attending on the day to demonstrate support for both troops and the community.

    BrizeFest also helped raise money for Help for Heroes, a charity for personnel who have received devastating injuries on operations, and the Helen and Douglas House hospices which specialise in tending to the care of terminally ill children.

    Former station commander, Group Captain Malcolm Brecht, said: “What a spectacular event it turned out to be, thanks to the kindness of JHS for the loan of the PA system. The equipment made it possible to have an outdoor event with spectacular sound quality and made for a most professional concert.”

GLOBAL GATHERING
Avolites consoles were specified extensively for lighting control in the majority of arenas at Global Gathering 2008, one of the UK’s leading dance festivals, staged at Long Marston Airfield near Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire.

    The stunning visual design that united lighting, digital and video sources into one seamless atmospheric experience for all five arenas and three terraces, was created by Nick Jevons and Phil Winward of Electric Fly Productions.

    Site wide lighting equipment was supplied by Blackburn-based HSL, and crew from both companies collaborated closely to ensure that it was one of the most visually memorable Global events to date.

    The Avolites consoles included two Diamond 4s, two Pearls and three Tigers. Jevons said: “Avolites is the ultimate festival console — nothing else offers the flexibility or ease of use for the hands-on, live operational style that’s required at these type of events, so it was an absolute no-brainer!”

    In the 12,000-capacity Global/Godskitchen Arena, where Tiesto, Judge Jules, Sasha, Armin Van Buren and Ferry Corsten performed, Nathan Wan programmed and operated the in-the-round lighting design, which included 40 Robe ColorWash and Spot 2500E AT moving lights, 18 Hungaroflash strobes and 16 bars of six PARs.

    His Diamond 4 Elite was also driving the Maxedia Compact media server run by Jake Jevons, feeding video content to 48 Barco MiTrix touring panels.

    Across the site in the Stealth/Random Concept Arena, Tim Williams ran an Avolites Pearl Expert console which was driving a spectacular 10m ‘wall of death’ constructed from 240 PAR cans in 20 pieces of pre-rigged truss. The aesthetics were carefully developed to accentuate the rich ‘Old Skool’ vibe of this tent.

    The PARs were run via video content from a media server triggered by the Pearl. Topping each piece of pre-rig was a huge special fuzz light. Sixteen strobes were scattered between the stage and audience trusses, and the retro ambience completed with 20 High End Cyberlight Turbos hung on the over-audience trussing.

    A ground support system was used to rig three concentric goal posts over the Polysexual/Cocoon stage, which were clad in low resolution CK iColor tiles. The stage and audience lighting was a combination of 24 Robe ColorSpot and ColorWash 700E ATs and 12 Martin Professional Atomic strobes. All of this, and a Hippotizer digital media server feeding the iColor tiles, was run via a Pearl Expert operated by Toby Hogarth.

    The eye-catching architectural elements in the Bedrock/Spectrum tent were three shrinking-perspective trussing semi-circles, loaded with 240 Pulsar ChromaStrip LED tubes, evoking a crazy starburst LED effect.

    Instead of running these through a media server, the RGB control of each individual strip was harnessed through the console, allowing operator Mark Jones to take full advantage of the Avo Diamond 4’s shape generation facilities, so it effectively became as effective as a media server.

    Jones also made the most of other D4 effects like dimmer and colour spreads. The D4 was also controlling 26 Robe moving lights onstage and eight over the audience, plus 12 Atomic strobes.

    Three Avo Pearl Tigers in stand-alone mode were utilised to run the three open air Terrace areas — Mixmag, Polysexual and Raveology/Air — designed by Electric Fly. They were controlling an assortment of fixtures including Martin Stage Bars and SmartMAC 150s, Coemar SuperCycs, JTE PixelLines, Atomic strobes and plasma screen content.

    Global Gathering joins a long list of Avolites-controlled festivals — an application in which the brand excels as the most popular for busking, hands-on, live improvised operation.

EXIT
The eighth Exit Festival at Novi Sad, Serbia’s second city, saw Audio Konstruktor’s début as a member of the Synco Europe Network on July 10-14.

    The locally-based audio and lighting rental company expands the Synco network to 11 independent rental companies, with a geographical span from the Canary Islands to Romania, while Audio Konstruktor’s partnership with Netherlands–based Synco marked Serbia’s first major international live production collaboration.

    Featuring N-E-R-D, Primal Scream, The Streets, the Sex Pistols and Paul Weller amongst its 2008 line-up, Exit is picturesquely sited amid the ramparts of the massive, 17th century hilltop Petrovaradin Fortress across the Danube from Novi Sad. The four-day, 27-stage rock, pop and dance festival currently has a daily audience capacity of 47,000, although there are plans to expand as infrastructure improves.

    It has has extraordinary political and emotional resonance for Serbia, as it was formed by young people as part of the protest movement against the régime of the late former president Slobodan Miloševic, whose wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was arrested on July 21.

    The spirit that inspired Exit’s birth remains fresh. Festival director Martin Pavlik explained: “From the beginning it meant exit from the political situation, and then exit from the boring life and agony; it’s about lifestyle, not only music.”

    Audio Konstruktor, founded by Sreten Kovacevic, former guitarist with earlier rebels, Communist-era punk stars Pekinška Patka, provided full sound and lighting production services to the Fusion stage. One of Exit’s three largest stages, its name derives from its mix of Eastern European rock and pop.

    Kovacevic decided to join the Synco network and is to add Synco 12” stage monitors to its XTA-controlled Martin Audio W8L, W8LC, W8LCD and WSX218X cabinets and LE series wedges, with Martin and Lab.gruppen amplification. The newest addition, deployed at FOH at Exit, is a DiGiCo D1, along with a Yamaha LS9 console.

    The production design for this 35,000 capacity main stage was created by Marko Maleševic of lighting company Studio Berar.

    The future looks bright for the self-styled ‘State of Exit’, with organisers celebrating its new-found status as one of the continent’s hottest ‘destination festivals’, cemented last year by collecting the Yourope Award for Best European Festival.

LOVEBOX
Sunbaba provided all the branded signage and the stunning stage scrims for The Lovebox London Weekender which took place in Victoria Park on July 19-20.

    The Lovebox Weekender featured the only UK appearance from the stunning Flaming Lips, as well as performances from Goldfrapp and festival founders Groove Armada.

    The branding project which totalled over 700m2 across the 25 acre site included intricate Ultramesh scrims for the main stage, which wrapped tightly around LED screens positioned on either side. The stage also featured giant bunting which was created by Sunbaba from a knitted polyester fabric.

    The company also created Digisound PA scrims for each of the smaller stages, ensuring perfect sound reproduction for the acts playing, and Ultramesh header banners featuring sponsor and media partner logos.

    Lovebox production manager Tim Harvey said: “Sunbaba’s input was invaluable in Lovebox’s successful on-site branding.”

THE LIFT FESTIVAL
Stage Electrics has been supplying sound and AV equipment for the entire run of the Lift Festival 2008 — an extraordinary programme of international premieres, talks, screenings and participatory events, taking place over the summer at Stratford and London’s South Bank Centre.

    At the heart of the festival is The Lift itself, a ground-breaking mobile venue and meeting place. Andrew Sugg, business development manager at Stage Electrics, said: “The project requires a flexible system which can be used for many applications, from live music, dance and film to individual speakers.”

    Stage Electrics’ equipment for the season included Yamaha LS9 consoles, L-Acoustics and EAW loudspeakers and Sennheiser radio mics.

T IN THE PARK
Last, but definitely not least... Scotland’s top summer festival, T In The Park was another massive success for promoter DF Concerts, with Midas consoles featuring high on the equipment spec.

    Local rental company EFX Audio deployed its two Midas XL8 live performance systems at FOH for the Radio 1/NME stage — with two Heritage 3000s on monitors. Main stage headliners R.E.M. also brought in a pair of XL8s supplied by Rat Sound plus a Klark Teknik DN9696 hard disk recorder which they’ve been using for their European tour, making this a true ‘XL8 fest’.

    In addition, Britannia Row supplied the main stage with two H3000s at FOH while Kings Of Leon brought in their own XL4.

    “Any misgivings we felt about running a festival on digital consoles were lost after the first day,” said EFX systems tech Bill Laing, who worked with the XL8s alongside EFX’s Stevie Murray. “First time users found the consoles immediately familiar thanks to the traditional channel strip layout and easy channel access. Bands that already had show files were easily integrated into the show using the powerful and easy to use show editor.”

    EFX’s XL8s were used by more than 90% of engineers working on the Radio 1/NME stage. The Chemical Brothers’ engineer Shan Hira was just one. “I wasn’t a complete novice on the XL8 as I’d spent time at Midas putting together a starting point for the T In The Park show,” he said. “As a long-time XL4 user it was nice that the desk felt like a Midas and the metering was the same.

    “I found the desk quick to get around compared with other digital desks, and liked the fact that the panpots were always the panpots, so I didn’t get lost in layers like on some digital desks. I would put the XL8 it straight in at number one as my choice of digital desk.”

    EFX used the XL8’s AES50 network to its full potential throughout the weekend. Not only was the network used for the mic inputs from stage, the audio was transmitted to the PA amps by connecting the loudspeaker controllers to the AES50 network. This meant that the entire system was distributed digitally, from mic input to amplifier input.

    The various matrix outputs to the PA system were fed into the relevant loudspeaker processors at FOH. The outputs from these were fed back into the network and then additional DL451 I/O boxes on stage fed the amp racks. This made the whole system very flexible, quick and easy to set up. There was no need for long runs of copper multicores back to stage, improving the overall sound quality.

    BBC sound engineer Simon Askew was working in the BBC mobile at the festival, mixing TV and radio coverage using the transformer isolated splits from the front of the XL8’s DL431 stageboxes. “The splits sounded as transparent as I’ve ever heard, and not having to patch back and forth between two different systems, which is the case at most festival setups, was a first for me,” he said.

    EFX was delighted with the performance of the XL8s at the festival. “We didn’t expect to walk away from the weekend feeling that after the set-up, the job was going to be as easy and familiar as it proved to be,” said Laing.

    Liverpool’s Adlib Audio supplied sound for the King Tut’s Wah Wah and Slam stages. The massive, V-shaped, dance-orientated Slam stage tent had a capacity of 20,000. Its shape and scale presented some interesting challenges for Adlib crew chief Hassane Essiahi and his team who worked closely with sound engineer Dave Pringle to ensure that all the bands and DJs had the requisite levels of energy and volume to make it rock!

    The 40m wide stage was located at the middle point of the V, leaving large sections towards the edges of the tent needing to be covered. This was achieved with the installation of two delay stacks per side.

    They chose to use a JBL VerTec system, all ground stacked, with the main stage stacks containing six VT4889 elements a side, augmented with two 4889s per side at the edges of the stage, plus Adlib’s own AA FD2 infills along the stage lip. For subs, there were eight VT 4880As per side. The four delays comprised three Nexo Alpha S2 subs, three B1 bass and six M3 tops per stack.

    Fundamental to getting the sound spot-on in this tent was time-aligning all the subs (main system and delays) to work together, starting with those in front of the DJ platform. Once this was in place, the system didn’t need to be over-cranked to get sufficient SPLs, energy and sonic vibes into the space.

    The FOH console was a Soundcraft Series 5 with which the majority of engineers are familiar and comfortable. The system was controlled via Dolby Lake processors, giving individual control for each zone via a wireless tablet, which is extremely handy for EQ’ing and time alignment from different positions.

    Compression included dbx 160As and Avalon 737s, the latter a hot favourite with DJs for its warm, natural sound. The VerTec amps were a combination of Camco (for the HF) and Crown iTech 8000s for the subs, and the Nexo delays were driven with Camco V6 and Crown 5002VZs.

    A standard Adlib FX rack at FOH was available for all to use, containing a Lexicon PCM 70, Yamaha SPX 990 and 2000s and the ever-popular Eventide H3000 harmoniser, which is always a big hit with bands.

    The monitor system comprised a Midas XL3 console with XTA graphics and Adlib MP3 wedges. The DJ riser monitors were MP3s combined with two L-Acoustics dV-Subs, and side fills were a single stack of Nexo Alpha per side.

    Otto Kroymann who babysat monitors, and Mike Flaherty and Tom Cunningham made up the rest of the crew.

    Across the site at King Tut’s Wah Wah stage, Richie Nicholson worked with his team of Steve Pattison (FOH babysitter), Kenny Perrin (monitor bottom wiper), Laura Davis and Kenny Kristiansen.

    They also installed a VerTec/Adlib/Nexo system, with Camco and Crown amps. The FOH console was a Midas H3000 while a Midas XL3 was on monitors — Adlib also supplied a Yamaha PM5D for The Pogues.

    Everything went extremely smoothly in here as well, along with the general relaxed and upbeat vibe of the festival, hailed as one of the best events in T’s 15-year history, which also saw it blessed with good weather. Nicholson commented: “It was very hard work but also great fun with lots of excellent bands.”

    The Tennents T-Break stage has become an increasingly influential showcase for unsigned bands at T In The Park. One of the companies responsible for introducing this feature eight years ago was Glasgow-based production company, Dyna-Mix.

    This year, Dyna-Mix rigged the 2,000-capacity marquee with Monacor’s compact L-Ray/1000 line array system — with two flown hangs, three clusters per side. It also equipped the stage with eight of Monacor’s PAB615/SW floor monitors —six floor wedges were provided in three pairs, with two stacked for drumfill.

    “We only have six clusters of L-Ray and we ran them at the limit, 12 hours a day, for three days without a break,” reported Dyna-Mix proprietor Jerry Radford. “But we achieved no distortion whatsoeover and the clarity was perfect. Both Tennents and DF Concerts were delighted and I would have no problem about using this system again in the same conditions.”

    The impact of this tent is now such that Radford reckons a minimum of six unsigned bands each year leave the T-Break stage with contract offers. Last year, Attic Lights became the subject of a bidding war after playing T-Break and they now have a five-album deal with a major label.

    This time around the 60m x 30m tent was also given an extra boost when Paolo Nutini defected from his main stage spot to join the 16 bands in T-Break instead.

    But it wasn’t just the promoters who had cause to praise the Monacor set-up, as Radford reported. “Feedback from bands who brought their own monitor engineers was that they were delighted with the PAB615/SW. Many said they were astonished by the quality — and these really are the business; the amount of abuse they can take is incredible — in fact, we had four stolen during the load-out!”

    When Dyna-mix, which has been working various stages at T In The Park on and off over the past 13 years, needed to invest in line array technology, Radford took the most cost-effective option available — although he admits that he initially purchased L-Ray/1000 for an installation.

    Since then it has given him sterling service as an essential part of his rental fleet — not only in Kinross but events such as the Hey You Get Off My Pavement Festival in Glasgow, with Connect still to come.

    The compact, active L-Ray/1000 is an array of high power capability, with four mid-high range speaker units and a dual bass module, each with its own 350W (RMS) power amplifier and controlling software, giving a continuous 700W RMS and peak output of 1000W per cluster.

    As the T-Break tent becomes increasingly influential so Dyna-Mix will continue to raise the bar in terms of production values. This year it flew the L-Ray system on trussing supplied by partner firm, CPE Lighting, while Stagehire Scotland provided the staging.

TPi
Photography by Louise Stickland,
Mike Lethby, Mark Cunningham,
Jerry Gilbert, Tim Mitchell
and other sources