Napa, CA––Under new management, BottleRock 2014 provided three days of exceptional music, food and drink without any of the problems that affected last year’s trial launch.
As Jason Alt of Delicate Productions, provider of audio, video and lighting for the event points out, “This year’s festival was smoother, more organized and better run. Participating vendors and artists were taken care of in advance and everyone had a very positive festival experience.”
The eclectic lineup for the festival included The Cure, Outkast, Weezer, TV On The Radio, Heart, Third Eye Blind, Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors, Gin Blossoms and dozens more bands, solo artists and comedians that spanned a range of styles and musical generations.
Once again, Delicate provided Martin Audio MLA and MLA Compact loudspeaker systems for the two main sponsored stages, Toshiba and Sprint, to ensure proper coverage within the festival grounds and output control to prevent noise overspill in surrounding residential neighborhoods.
“The city of Napa didn’t have a noise ordinance until after last year’s event and we teamed with the city to establish one that would work for the festival and the city,” Jason explains. “We came up with 105dB C-weighted at front of house, 110 feet from the stage, measured over an hour period average. This gave us enough latitude for bands to get louder for ten minutes at a time, which allowed for dynamics within that average without adversely affecting any artist’s performance.
“None of the artists or engineers had any issues with the noise ordinance. Even with the newly imposed time restrictions of stopping by 10pm, the festival went really well. And we had no noise complaints from those living near the festival site either.”
Part of this year’s new PA guidelines included removing the delay towers from the main stage to eliminate excess noise, which had no negative impact on coverage according to Alt. “It made the throw for MLA about 600 feet and the system still performed really well. The audience listening experience didn’t suffer at all. People were able to hear it and everything sounded really consistent and clear.”
The Toshiba main stage system consisted of two speaker clusters a side, each consisting of 16 Martin Audio MLA and two MLD (downfill) enclosures; 24 ground-stacked MLX subs; 12 W8LM speakers for front fills; two clusters for side fills, each containing 4 W8C, 4 W8CS compact subs, and 2 WS218X subs; and 6 MLA Compact each as side hangs.
An Avid Profile 96/24 console was used for FOH, and Yamaha PM5D-RH, DSP5D and Avid Venue 48/24 consoles were used for Monitors. Six Shure UHF-R wireless systems with SM58 capsules were also part of the main stage setup.
For the second (Sprint) stage, Delicate combined 18 Martin Audio MLA Compact enclosures per side with 12 DSX ground-stacked subs; 2 side fill clusters containing 2 W8Cs, 2 W8CS compact subs and a WS218X sub; 4 W8LCs for front fills and Martin Audio LE1200S and LE2100S stage monitors to complete the package.
Asked about MLA, Outkast FOH engineer Darcy Khan replied, “I enjoyed the system a lot. The most important thing was the clarity at 200 feet. I was skeptical about that because a lot of line arrays claim to have it but don’t deliver. And this is the only system I’ve come across that can produce enough low end with just 24 subs, but the way Delicate set it up with that block across the front of the stage, it was there. I was very pleased with it, the system really delivered the goods.”
Concluding, Jason added, “Overall the MLA’s performance exceeded our expectations. Everybody was very impressed with what the system was able to do and all of the engineers, many of whom were new to the system, had a great mixing experience with it.”
For more about Martin Audio, please click to www.martin-audio.com.
About Martin Audio®
Founded by audio engineer David Martin in 1971, Martin Audio pioneered the use of all-horn-loaded bass designs in world-class touring loudspeaker systems for groups such as Pink Floyd, ELP and Supertramp. Located outside of London, Martin Audio now embodies a sophisticated mix of acoustic design, research, mathematical modeling and software engineering for a wide range of products in the installation, cinema and touring sound markets.
