Cape Town, South Africa (June 26, 2023)—English singer-songwriter Calum Scott, touring behind his latest album, Bridges, recently played to a full crowd of 2,000 at Zevenwacht Wine Estate in Cape Town. On hand to provide production was Ultra Events.
“Zevenwacht Wine Estate is an interesting venue, as the front row is at stage height and the back row rises to an elevation of 8 metres, due to a natural slope,” said Costa Champanis, owner of Ultra Events. “The brief was to provide great sounding audio for all guests, from the front row to the back row.”
Ultra spec’d a full d&b Audiotechnik system, based around a main PA of a dozen V8 mid-high loudspeakers, with four V12 flown in L-R arrays with eight elements per side, supplemented by 12 B22 subwoofers. d&b M4 loudspeakers were deployed as front fills and monitors, with the whole system driven by d&b D80 power amplifiers.
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With the budget and system defined, a suitable system design was created by Ultra Events Audio HOD, Patrick Dudgeon. “On the day, we did not have enough time to do a site inspection and had to quickly redesign the stage position due to weather and increased ticket sales. Therefore, we needed to redefine the parameters on setup day. There were also noise restrictions at the venue with residential areas close by, but we could easily verify the array and subwoofer positions with the R1 software at low volume,” said Dudgeon. “Inclement weather disrupted our ability to properly tune the system, but by defining the venue layout, as well as the prediction of the system response and relative delay times, it allowed us to open up a PA system that was close to perfect.”
With the weather finally clearing, the Ultra team were ready to hand over to the artists’ sound engineers to kick off the event. “After only a few minutes of tuning, we were ready to hand the PA over to Calum Scott’s sound engineer,” concludes Patrick. “The venue was filled to capacity and the system performed beautifully, whilst the crowd enjoyed a memorable evening.”
