The recent TikTok In the Mix festival in suburban Phoenix, which attracted an in-person audience of 17,000 and also had 33.5 million remote viewers, was supported by a concert system employing Cohesion loudspeakers deployed by Valencia, CA-based ATK Audiotek, a Clair Global brand.
Enabling the audience to focus on the 360-degree stage at the center of the stadium required no flown visual obstructions. The audio design also needed to manage clearance for video towers and a freewheeling Spidercam meant to capture live footage for the TikTok livestream. BAFTA Award-winning director Hamish Hamilton and event producers Done+Dusted in collaboration with Yellow Studios required that nothing tall be constructed at or near the main stage.
“They didn’t want to see it, but it had to sound good,” says ATK Audiotek account executive Andres Arango. The design deployed a hybrid approach of flown and ground stacked line arrays. Eight clusters of 10 CO12 loudspeakers were flown from four towers, sufficiently equidistant from center stage to ensure clear sightlines for all in-person and remote spectators. The flown system was supplemented by eight strategically placed ground stacks of two CO12 loudspeakers and an additional eight ground stacks of four CO10 loudspeakers.
“Considering the design limitations, the coverage we ended up with was outstanding,” says Jeff Peterson, front of house production mixer. “Every audience area had crystal-clear, high-fidelity audio without impeding audience or camera sightlines.”
The main system was augmented by 48 CP218 II+ self-powered subwoofers in an arrangement of 12 stacks of four, to provide low-end output, impact, and control. Twenty self-powered CP6+ point source loudspeakers were used as complementary front fill to complete the system.
“What’s critical is how much energy comes off products in directions we don’t want,” Peterson concludes. “What we found of Cohesion is it’s very controlled and very helpful. There’s not a lot of unwanted energy off the back and sides.”
