Daft Punk’s conceptual stage show (fusion of lights, LED and video) at the recent Bang! Music Festival in Florida was so unique that a fifth, separate stage was added to accommodate them. Technical production manager for festival, Andre Serafini, explained: “This was very much 11th hour. As soon as we saw the renderings of their huge triangular set, we knew there was no way we could put other acts on in front of them without revealing the magic.”
Fortunately promoters Haddad Productions also saw the dilemma and without hesitation ordered in another 60×40 outdoor stage. “We also had to pull in another P.A. system,” continued Serafini. “My company, Beach Sound Inc., already had the other four stages covered, but we were maxed-out, equipment-wise, with some simultaneous corporate events elsewhere in the States taking the last of our inventory.
“I’d recently purchased a d&b audiotechnik Q-Series line array through Chris Carlton at Carlton Audio Services,” he continued. “It was for a specific installation, somewhere demanding a small, lightweight system. When Daft Punk’s audio supervisor Peter Franco turned up, he was very thorough.” As Franco confirmed, “I thought the clarity was great. Frequency response was pretty stellar, and we had good coverage all the way to the back.”
Serafini was impressed with Franco’s work: “When you consider this is just a 2-channel show, he knew his stuff. He checked all Smaart parameters, component-checked every inch of the system, time alignment, coverage and at the end announced himself very pleased. For me ,I was especially impressed with the cardioid subwoofers. We were already using d&b B2s in cardioid mode for the other main stage where Gnarls Barkley and Duran Duran headlined, but the flown J subwoofers were just amazing, low-end control almost as good as what we’ve become accustomed to in the higher frequency ranges.”
For more information on d&b, visit www.dbaudio.com. For more information on the festival, visit www.bangmusicfestival.com/index.asp.
