The Life is Beautiful Music & Art Festival returned to Las Vegas in September, occupying 18 downtown city blocks to present three-day lineup of performances by Billie Eilish, Megan Thee Stallion, A$AP Rocky, Green Day, and more than 100 additional acts, with sound reinforcement for the event’s three main stages provided by Solotech in partnership with Meyer Sound.
“We were the first festival to put a lineup out and say, ‘We’re going to do this,'” Craig Nyman, the festival’s head of music and live performances told Billboard magazine. “I think that really sparked a bit of hope and energy in the industry and let people feel that, ‘Hey, let’s go out, we can do this.'”
The main Downtown Stage and Bacardí Stage were anchored by LEO and LYON linear line array loudspeakers augmented by 900-LFC and 1100-LFC low-frequency control elements, while the Huntridge Stage was served by a mix of medium and wide-pattern LYON loudspeakers and 900-LFC low-frequency control elements.
For production teams, designing systems with fixed placement inside the tight confines of an urban environment meant finding creative ways to tackle sound management and noise mitigation. Compounding the challenge of keeping sound — particularly low end — within festival grounds and out of residential areas, the team could not control delay tower placement. To help overcome these constraints, they turned to system modeling, utilizing Meyer Sound MAPP 3D system design and prediction software.
“Weather conditions — not just wind, but atmospheric issues like humidity — play a large part in how the system sound carries,” says Mike Smeaton, U.S. Director of Operations for Solotech. “In MAPP 3D, you can look at the predictions that you want to do, then you can put it into your production, which is a real help.”
To manage low-end patterns, Smeaton says Solotech and Meyer Sound worked together to design both gradient and end-fire subwoofer arrays: “There was a combination of gradient flown subs on the main stage, plus we’ve done gradient stacks as well with 1100-LFCs. Outside of that, we have VLFC very low frequency control elements in two blocks on each side. We flew some subs in gradient, six VLFCs behind each array. I think that really helped with the coverage and helped control the pattern. The VLFC is very musical; they are really great subwoofers.”
“Solotech has been doing Life is Beautiful for many years now in conjunction with Meyer Sound,” he concludes. “This collaboration means we have continuity, we have lots of factory resources. It helps that we know the product. We know that each product is doing what we ask it to do, and we’re not competing manufacturer to manufacturer.”
Life is Beautiful returns to downtown Las Vegas in September 2022.
