This year’s Big Feastival, an annual three-day event featuring an all-star performance line-up that’s held on the farm of Blur bass guitarist Alex James near Kingham in Oxfordshire, was supported by Bristol-based production company SWG Events with a main stage system utilizing 12-per-side Martin Audio WPL arrays to deliver primary coverage joined by W8LC compact modules for outfill and more.
According to Simon Purse, SWG Events head of audio, special care had been needed to ensure the VIP area, set off axis, was still within the coverage area of the outfills. The key was to avoid projecting sound beyond the rear perimeter boundary, which is adjacent to a second venue called the Cheese Hub — a double decker disco.
“In previous years we’ve had problems in being able to avoid hitting this venue and disrupting the live music; we’ve used delays to aid in control, but this has never been a perfect solution and had led to compromises with audience and non-audience areas” states Purse.
WPL, which they were able to run without delays, offered a different approach and enabled more simple system adjustment. Purse: “It provided all the advantages of being able to avoid [the Cheese Hub] while enabling us to use fewer boxes than in previous years. Had there been an issue we’d have been able to deal with it because of the workflow, with a ready solution in place before any potential problem was experienced, rather than relying on a knee jerk reaction. In this instance we used an optimization profile in the DISPLAY software that transitioned the area from ‘non-audience’ to ‘Hard Avoid’ and as a result the sound dropped off significantly.”
WPL was driven in 2-box resolution from Martin Audio’s process-controlled multi-channel iKON amps, and by using the company’s new DX4.0 dedicated system controller, they were able to place the legacy W8LC on the same network, allowing full system control from a single point.
A further eight W8LM along the stage lip provided front fills and 12 XE500 wedges were available to provide additional stage energy. Also providing stage fills on each side were a pair of TORUS T1230 point source boxes on top of two SXC118 cardioid subwoofers.
The LF design called for 14 SXH218 enclosures in a castellated cardioid system, with nine forward facing and five rear facing. “We have used DISPLAY to draw that out with the software’s new Subwoofer Calculator tool because of the width of the venue,” Purse adds. “This provides the delay times and enables us to design an arc shaped array of subs in time, rather than space. There is also a gain shading element where the volume of each of the subs is alternated to give a very rounded dispersion pattern. It works really well, and I’ve had great results with that all summer.”
The line-up this time out included Sigrid, Tom Grennan, Blossoms, Vaccines, Rick Astley, Everything, Example, Hot Chip, Melanie C, Faithless, Natalie Imbruglia, Lightning Seeds, Faithless, Mae Muller, Katy B, and Jake Shears.
Sigrid’s long-term sound engineer, Jan Halsvik, says, “This was my first time on this new Martin Audio system, and I had a great time mixing on it. [The PA] seemed very well tuned for the site, and being able to blend the older boxes with the new made it sound like a seamless transition when walking the area. This worked well with the festival being a very family friendly one.
“The whole system kept a tight and consistent output over the whole perimeter, and also stayed true between sound check and show. In fact it was extremely pleasurable having it sound as I had intended during sound check, providing me with ample headroom and solid low end.”
The SWG Events team for the event include Mark Bott as operations manager and long-term event production manager; Joe Bailey was his production assistant; Matt Pope was both system engineer and FOH tech (Pope, in particular, was tasked with taking Purse’s CAD design template and making any specific adjustments and fine tuning once on site). Other techs involved were Oliver Haward (monitors); Sam Jones and Daniel Wooles (patch).
