A key
component of Capital Sound’s busy summer festival schedule is the annual visits
to Hungary, where they provide technical infrastructure for the Sziget
Organisation at three major gatherings.
For
several years they have serviced the back-to-back four-day Volt rock festival
in Sopron, before trucking the equipment two and a half hours south east from
the Austrian border to Balaton Sound, which takes place on the beach of Zamárdi
over five days.
Having
established Martin Audio’s flagship MLA system at these two festivals, in 2014
the organisers were keen to try the system out on their own flagship event: the
Sziget Festival itself. And with all three of the festivals growing
exponentially, Capital Sound general manager Paul Timmins says that delivering
bespoke 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 MLA partner Mu?nicki Sound Systems, who
provided their MLA System 36 and as a result will support Cap at these events
for the next two years. “Given the logistics, and the different deployments
required for each site, we always need to be very clever with truck space,”
said 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 — and Maciej [Mu?nicki]
and his team were fantastic.”
VOLT
FESTIVAL
Described
as “multi-genre”, and drawing an attendance of over 100, 000 last year to the
wide open spaces and green fields of Sopron, this year headliners
included Iron Maiden, The Prodigy, Wiz Khalifa, Axwell^Ingrosso, Slayer,
Damien Rice, Paul Kalkbrenner and Sigma.
For 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 — a pattern
increasingly adopted by Capital where greater LF punch is required (and tight
control is of less importance). Five stacks of three MLX each side (with the
bottom enclosure reversed) were spaced either side of a centre fill of 12 x
WS218X subs, on a separate send. Front fills consisted of 12 x Martin Audio
W8LC line arrays while two small ‘shadow’ delays, comprising three W8LC’s a
side, were flown behind the mix tower.
BALATON
SOUND
Specialising
in house music, and set on Balaton Lake, the 10th Balaton Sound Festival
recorded a total visitor number of 157,000, breaking all records for the
five-day beach party.
Again
Paul Timmins set out the challenges. “This is a much a wider site — more like a
rectangular football pitch — and around 90m from the stage to the edge of the
lake. Because of the arty nature of the stage, there are limitations on weight
loading — so it is fortunate that MLA is not overly heavy.”
For the
main hangs Cap 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.
Balaton
Sound did, however, require more delays than Volt. Two main towers each
featured six W8LC on each, under which were six WS218X subs to throw the low
frequencies in particular back towards the lake. Additional ‘shadow’ delays in
the form of three W8LC’s were set behind each of the two FOH mix positions.
Lining up
to perform were Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Martin Garrix, Armin van Buuren,
Steve Aoki, Martin Solveig, Paul van Dyk and many more dance specialists — all
able to achieve dance level SPL’s from MLA, evenly distributed across the
entire frequency range.
SZIGET
FESTIVAL
Capital
Sound has been servicing this festival for more than a decade, and has last
year established MLA at this event as well as the two sister festivals. This
year almost half a million people attended the ‘Island of Freedom” throughout
the mammoth, week-long festival, which saw headliners the Chemical Brothers,
Rihanna, David Guetta, Muse, SIA, Manu Chao La Ventura, Hardwell and many other
international names.
This time
the main hangs consisted of 17 x 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 x
W8LM Mini Line Array.
In addition,
there were four separate delay points using a total of 32 x MLA and four MLD
Downfills, with LF extension on the delays provided by 16 x 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.
Summing
up, Paul Timmins said, “Everything worked so well with MLA last year that this
year was pretty much plain sailing. The new sub design proved extremely
popular, particularly with Muse [whose sound was mixed by their veteran FOH
engineer Marc Carolan]. They were particularly complimentary.”
Capital
Sound’s project manager and crew chief on all three Hungarian festivals was
Charlie Ellery, while Marty Beath system teched Volt and Balaton and Toby
Donovan fulfilled the role at Sziget. Also on hand as the Hungarian MLA tech
(as he was last year) was Marci Mezi.
Summing
up Paul Timmins said, “Although Hungarian festivals tend not to have SPL
measured, Sziget epitomizes the perfect sound level, running at 100-103dB. And
those levels present no problems with offsite thresholds for a system such as
MLA.”
Underlining
the strength of Martin Audio’s MLA partnership, Hungarian sound production
company BG Event recently invested in MLA Compact, and provided the system for
the subsidiary, Europe and Colosseum stages at Sziget.
BG
Event’s Balázs Szentiványi. reports that for the former, they
supplied 16 x MLA Compact (eight on each wing) with eight WS218X subs, a pair
of Martin Audio XD12 providing infill, with monitors in the form of a WS218X
(for DJ and drum monitors) and ten Martin Audio LE1200 wedges.
They also
equipped the Colosseum stage with 20 x W8LM, eight WS218X, a pair of XD12 for
infills, a pair of S18+ and four LE1500.
Photos with
thanks to 2016 SzigetFestival.com – © Rockstar Photographers
