Miami, FL (May 23, 2012)—Although it switched venues to Bay Front Park, Miami’s annual EDM event Ultrafest once again had local audio provider Beachsound on hand to tackle sound duties this year. As part of the company’s strategy, it made use of d&b audiotechnik systems, putting J-Series systems on both stages with some Q-Series and C7s for fill and delay.
Harry Brill, an independent consultant who supported Beachsound’s Neil Rosenstock for the event, pointed out, “Neil designed the entire PA for both d&b stages. We discussed some issues I anticipated with the sub array being very long horizontally, and addressed them together. The d&b array modeling software makes it so easy to try things and check on the result. We wanted the coverage to be well defined without much of a power alley.”
The parkland setting of the 2012 festival made this a trickier equation than the more open site used in previous years. Brill explained,”Sight lines required the J-Infras to be stacked only two high. At the recommended spacing for directional subs, the horizontal line would have been so wide we would not have been able to open up the coverage even with the arc delay setting selected in the amplifier. I suggested we move everything in tight. I have used lots of directional subs and I wasn’t worried a bit. Worse case, we lose some of the intentional cancelling behind the array, but it honestly worked really well. Getting the boxes closer together really helped open up the pattern. Some say you need a certain kind of box and a certain kind of tuning for a particular type of music. I don’t really subscribe to that theory, but rather believe if the system can handle the SPL requirements at all the needed frequencies, then I can use it.”
Beachsound’s founder Andre Serafini remarked, “We have increased the number of loudspeakers each year; this year on the main stage, we put more J loudspeakers, as well as on the Live Stage. Moving the festival to Bay Front Park made for a nicer crowd environment and the whole site was a lot more energetic, but it presented new challenges for audio, not least the physical obstructions like trees and fountains. We knew well in advance what we would be dealing with and we do other events here in the park, but it did mean segmenting the audience areas and often treating each one as a discrete audio zone; then time aligning the whole system to make it coherent.”
Beachsound
www.beachsound.com
d&b audiotechnik
www.dbaudio.com
