Hungary (February 13, 2017)—Last year saw the UK’s Capital Sound hit Hungary to provide technical infrastructure for the Sziget Organisation at three major festivals: the four-day Volt rock festival in Sopron; Balaton Sound, which takes place on the beach of Zamárdi over five days; and the Sziget Festival.
With all three of the festivals growing, Capital Sound general manager Paul Timmins says that delivering sound designs that take into account the peculiarities of the different site dimensions and terrains, all within a tight budget, presents a real challenge. This year, he enlisted the services of Polish Martin Audio MLA partner Municki Sound Systems, who provided its MLA System 36.
“Given the logistics, and the different deployments required for each site, we always need to be very clever with truck space,” says Timmins. “This is a two-truck operation, but for budget reasons, we can only bring one from the UK, containing all the control and a lot of the speakers. It’s therefore great to be able to source the shortfall of equipment from within Eastern Europe with another Martin Audio partner.”
The Volt Festival headliners included Iron Maiden, The Prodigy, Wiz Khalifa, Axwell^Ingrosso, Slayer, Damien Rice, Paul Kalkbrenner and Sigma. for the main stage PA Capital fielded 17 MLA plus an MLD Downfill on each wing and for side hangs eight MLA stage left, and five on the facing flank. In addition, 30 MLX subs were set in a spaced cardioid array.
Meanwhile, the Balaton Sound Festival recorded 157,000 visitors, breaking all records for the five-day beach party. Timmins set out the challenges: “This is a much a wider site—more like a rectangular football pitch—and around 90 m from the stage to the edge of the lake.” For the main hangs, Capital rigged 13 MLA and an MLD Downfill on each side, with eight further MLA outfilling on each flank. They deployed the same 30 MLX, again in spaced cardioid pattern but without the centre WS218X. A further five MLA were set across the stage for front fills.
Meanwhile, this year almost half a million people attended the ‘Island of Freedom” Sziget Festival, which saw headliners the Chemical Brothers, Rihanna, David Guetta, Muse, SIA, Manu Chao La Ventura and Hardwell.
This time, the main hangs consisted of 17 MLA and an MLD Downfill on each side, with nine MLA and an MLD Downfill providing side hangs. Subwoofers consisted of 40 MLX in a spaced array comprising six stacks of three on each side of two stacks of two MLA, all evenly spaces across the front. Front fills consisted of 20 W8LM Mini Line Array. In addition, there were four separate delay points using a total of 32 MLA and four MLD Downfills, with LF extension on the delays provided by 16 WS218X across all four towers in a cardioid design. Two further shadow delays were set behind the mix tower, either side of the video screen, with four MLA Compact in each.
Capital Sound
capital-sound.co.uk
Martin Audio
martin-audio.com
