Festival Newsletter Case Studies

Despite pessimistic predictions in recent years that saturation point may be being reached, the summer outdoor festival market continues to thrive and grow, right across the globe. At the festival showgrounds of the USA, the parks and farms of Britain and the forests and fields of continental Europe, hundreds of thousands of people look forward to making their annual pilgrimmages to see high quality live music in the unique atmosphere of outdoor festivals.

For the companies and crew that deliver the technical infrastructure, the challenges are huge. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the world of mixing consoles. Rain, mud, dew, lightning… all words guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of any self-respecting mixing console… but all are integral risks of the unique phenomenon that is the outdoor music festival.

This is one of the reasons that, for many years, the rental companies have continued to supply predominantly analogue mixers for the house consoles at festivals. Old-school thinking held sway - despite the many advantages of digital mixers, traditional analogue consoles were believed to be more suited to the world of traditional mud.

But the summer of 2013 finally saw a significant change. Rental companies at last embraced the fact that DiGiCo digital consoles can cope just as well as analogue in the festival environment!

Fuelled by the requests of more and more engineers, the scrape of analogue fader was replaced by the noiseless glide of digital control; the old, dusty sound of analogue replaced by the pristine quality of zeros and ones; furious knob-twiddling at artist changeovers replaced by the calm of instant recall… as DiGiCo consoles were specified as house consoles at a significant number of major festivals

IntroDUCTION

Belgium is host to Pukkelpop, one of Europe’s most enduring festivals. 2013 was its 25th year and the 11th of its sister festival, the wryly-named Rimpelrock (translated as Wrinklerock), which takes place on the same site and is probably the world’s only pop/rock festival dedicated to an over 50s audience.

Belgium

“For the first 20 years of Pukkelpop, it was analogue and only analogue,” says Front of House engineer Patrick Demoustier from rental company EML. “Despite the touring world having embraced them many years ago, even up until recently it was rare for anyone to ask for a digital console. More and more engineers were using digital desks, but they would bring their own to the festival.

“From the classic festival setup of two analogue consoles at FoH and two at monitors, which engineers on succeeding artists would flip-flop between, over the years we went to one at each position because most engineers would bring their own desk. Nowadays more and more riders are asking for digital options - so this year, for the first time, we put in digital consoles at some festivals as the house desk.

“With the amount of digital consoles available, the biggest issue was to decide which ones to use? We chose DiGiCo because most engineers who are familiar with digital mixers know DiGiCo desks. And with the new SD Convert software, we could easily transfer the show files from any SD series console to whichever we had as a house desk.”

At both Pukkelpop and Rimpelrock Patrick supplied a DiGiCo SD8 as house console, while at the Rock a Field festival in Luxembourg, he supplied an SD7 as the main house desk.

“We had to babysit the few engineers who did not know DiGiCo consoles, but the interface is very user-friendly and reminiscent of an analogue mixer, so they were all happy mixing on them,” says Patrick. “In addition, we supplied a lot of DiGiCo desks for guest engineer riders.

“I’m sure that next year the house desk at 50% of the festivals we supply will be digital. And for us that means one thing - lots of DiGiCo!”

USAMarcus Amphitheater FOH for the artist Pitbull.

In Miami Florida, eight stages of electronic music scattered around downtown, featuring the likes of David Guetta, deadmau5, Tiësto and Swedish House Mafia, and attendance figures topping 165,000 over the weekend, makes the Ultra Music Festival one of North America’s largest such events.For the second year running.

Beachsound & Lighting chose SD8 consoles to handle FoH duties for the majority of the festival’s headliners over the three-day event.

“Shows like this have evolved into very large productions and each year we work to raise the bar technically and to achieve the next milestone in audio quality that the promoters and the fans expect,” says Beachsound president Andre Serafini. “Putting the DiGiCo on the front end of the system is the icing on the cake, and one that also gave us extreme control to manage the variable sources that were sent to us. The sound quality was superb!

Claimed to be one of the largest festivals in the world, Milwaukee’s 11-day Summerfest showcases over 800 acts on 11 stages to an audience totalling nearly 900,000.

Attracting a diverse array of high profile artists, this year’s event included headline sets by John Mayer, Pitbull, Rush, The Eagles, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, New Kids on the Block, Alice Cooper, Styx and the Barenaked Ladies.

Production company Clearwing worked closely with DiGiCo to provide five systems in key positions at premium stages throughout the event. The DiGiCo consoles included an SD5 and SD-Rack on FoH at the BMO/Harris Pavilion stage; an SD10 and SD-Rack on FoH at the Briggs & Stratton Big Backyard Stage; an SD11 on FoH at the JoJo’s Martini Lounge Stage; and an SD8 at the Miler Stage. An additional SD10 was in use at the

GERMANYThree of Germany’s major festivals made extensive use of DiGiCo mixers in 2013. The four-day Wacken festival is a mecca for heavy metal fans, where rental company Crystal Sound deployed a DiGiCo SD8 as house console.

Engineer Jacky Lehmann, from Berlin-based audio production company Audiosound Lehmann, was recording artist performances, using his SD9-equipped mobile studio. And proving that DiGiCo digital mixing technology rocks on reliably, a venerable D5 took centre stage as FoH console for the even more venerable Deep Purple!

Less metal and more classic rock is the Loreley Festival, where an SD5 supplied by rental company Pro Musik mixed the FoH sound for the likes of Whitesnake, Journey, Toto and Europe.

Meanwhile, at Germany’s biggest festival, Rock am Ring, headliners The Killers and Limp Bizkit used a DiGiCo SD7 and SD5 respectively at FoH, while leading German reggae band Seeed had an SD7 on monitors.

CHINAThe adoption of DiGiCo as festival house consoles has also spread east, with two significant outdoor events in China featuring them.

Midi is China’s largest and best-known outdoor music festival, seen by some as the country’s equivalent of Glaston-bury. Nowadays the festival has spread out across several cities, but the Beijing incarnation is still the biggest and here an SD10 was provided as the FoH house console by rental company Beijing Shi Ji Jia Ye Media Culture Co. Ltd.

Earlier in the year (at the end of 2012, to be precise) the 13th Hainan Island Happy Festival saw in the New Year with its huge oval, floating stage, dancers and live broadcast to over a dozen countries. A DiGiCo SD9 was entrusted with the role of FoH house console, chosen by dance company Sanya City Troupe and manned by engineer Lin Fu.

In Denmark, one of the country’s most popular festivals, the Thy Rock festi-val held in Thisted, north-west of the country, celebrates the best of Danish music each year, as well at the best in audio.

Equipment was, as usual, supplied by DPA SoundCo, a regular DiGiCo user, and featured a DiGiCo D5 as the FoH house console, with almost the entire range of SD Series desks, including SD7s, SD8s, SD9s, SD10s and SD11s, brought in by touring engineers for both mix positions throughout the two day event.

At Rock I Holstebro a D1 was uti-lised as the house monitor console, with visiting engineers bringing in a multitude of DiGiCo consoles. It was a similar story at the Grøn Koncert, Rock Under Broen and Jelling Musik Festi-vals, where DiGiCo D5s and multiple examples of the entire SD range were once again brought in by touring engineers.

DENMARK

One of Japan’s most famous music events, the Rising Sun Rock festival, is held in Hokkaido, northern Japan each year. Sound rental company Weekend Co supplied all the festival’s audio requirements, which included several DiGiCo consoles.

This year’s event saw 60,000 people attend over two days in August, enjoy-ing more than 80 artists, who per-formed across the festival’s five stages. The shear size of the event meant that Weekend Co invited Hibino-Inter-sound to work alongside them.

“The main stage has a capacity of about 15,000 people,” says Hibino-In-tersound’s Akira Noguchi. “The stage was used in an A/B set up, so we provided three DiGiCo SD10s an SD11i and two SD-Racks with optics, running at 96kHz, to allow for seamless opera-tion between the two stages.

“Loading a session file on a DiGiCo console is extremely fast and easy. As each artist had their own session file, it was the perfect set up and choice with DiGiCo consoles”.

JAPAN

In Australia, two festivals that have already featured DiGiCo consoles are the Port Fairy Folk Festival (PFFF), which has been running each year since 1977, and the first ever White Night Festival.

With its origins based firmly around Irish folk music and culture, the four-day PFFF has grown considerably in popularity over the past four decades and has evolved into an eclectic festival that encompasses the broader realms of blues, roots and world music and this year, three out of its five stages featured DiGiCo, with a mixture of SD8 and SD9 consoles and even a trusty D1.

At the White Night Festival in Melbourne’s city centre, 300,000+ festival goers enjoyed a 12 hour kaleidoscope of arts based entertainment. The showcase of creative delights encompassed all aspects of the arts including theatre performances, museum exhibitions, lighting shows and non-stop music from 7pm-7am. Throughout the event, from Southbank into the CBD, DiGiCo was the clear mixing console of choice all round.

“DiGiCo has continued to lead the world in digital mixing consoles,” says Anthony Touma, marketing director for DiGiCo’s Australian distributor, Group Technologies. “And its versatility in the Arts was highlighted nowhere better than at White Night 2013.”

AUSTRALIA

Amongst the many UK festivals that saw DiGiCo consoles in residence were two of the biggest: Barclaycard British Summer Time Concerts in London’s Hyde Park that saw promoter AEG Live take up the gauntlet for this tricky location; and the iconic Glastonbury.

With the Rolling Stones and Bon Jovi taking the two main headline slots, London-based audio rental company Capital Sound was appointed audio supplier and opted to have two SD10s as Front of House consoles, both relaying through an SD9, chosen because a high end product with fantastic audio quality was the only option, with the addition of Bon Jovi bringing in their own SD7.

At Glastonbury, despite not being the house console, headliners Arctic Monkeys and Mumford and Sons, plus Smashing Pumpkins who played on the Other Stage on the Sunday, all elected to take their own DiGiCo desks in with them.

“I only use DiGiCo consoles, so I used my SD7, while our monitor engineer John Shearman took his SD10 on stage,” confirms Pumpkins Front of House engineer Jon Lemon. “There’s nothing else that works for me at this point and they’re still the best sounding live console there is.”

UK

An event that now takes place in both South America and Europe, this year’s Brazilian edition of Rock in Rio took place in the City of Rock, a specially built venue on what will be the site of the 2016 Olympic Village, over two weekends in September.

The line up is always somewhat eclectic, catering for just about every musical taste, and featured Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, Jessie J, Metallica and Bruce Springsteen, with Iron Maiden headlining on the final night.

Rental company Gabisom has been working with the festival for many years and once again provided all its audio requirements, which included a number of DiGiCo consoles, with several bands brining their own DiGiCo desks, including Iron Maiden, who’s FoH engineer Martin Walker uses an SD7 and Jessie J, with Andy ‘Baggy’ Robinson, who looks after her monitoring requirements, opting for an SD5.

“We try to have everything and anything in our rental stock that people might ask for,” says Gabisom’s chief engineer, Peter Racy. “People looking for high-end products generally ask for DiGiCo. We were one of the first to carry the brand in Brazil and it’s been going from strength to strength ever since.”

BRAZIL