The 2016 Life is Beautiful festival in downtown Las Vegas was spread over 11 city blocks in a 3-day celebration of life and culture.
Boasting over 50 art installations, a “Learning Series” that featured numerous inspirational and educational speakers, and four stages of music including Insomniac Event’s Troubadour Stage with PK Sound’s Trinity robotic line array.
Insomniac Events and PK Sound provided event goers with a fully immersive experience at the Troubadour Stage that included over 25 headlining artists, an engaging stage design with special effects and a Trinity system that provided sound to thousands of festival-goers.
Among the headliners, there were some crowd favorites who made the Trinity system shine, including Bassnectar, Galantis, Excision, Seven Lions, ZHU and Gramatik.
“Insomniac works with a pretty high bar production–wise; They never disappoint with their high production quality, and the lineup is no exception. The highlight of our weekend was seeing the PK Sound and Bassnectar relationship come full circle—it was his first time playing on the Trinity system. No one was disappointed. The Bassnectar creative team brought their unique visual wizardry through lighting, video and lasers, while the Trinty system delivered the high–impact, enveloping audio experience that both Bassnectar and PK fans expect,“ says Arlen Cormack, VP of Production at PK Sound.
The sound system included 14 Trinity modules flown per side as the main hangs, as well as 6 additional flown Trinity loudspeakers per side for delays. For the low-end, 48 CX800 dual 18-inch subwoofers were used as part of the main PA, along with another 4 CX800 per side flown directly behind the Trinity delays.
Every event is different and each come with unique challenges. The benefits of Trinity’s ability to remotely sculpt the sound field came into play tuning the system for the extra-long dance floor of the Troubadour stage.
“The tent was a long–throw, so rather than overpowering fans up front we hung delay speakers about 180-feet from the stage, and with Kontrol software we tightened up the CMI waveguides of Trinity to focus the sound further back. We then time-aligned them to the main hang for complete transparency throughout,” says Ian Hicks, front of house for Bassnectar and sound engineer at PK Sound.
“Using Trinity’s unique directional high frequency control abilities, we prevented phasing and unwanted reflections from bouncing off the side walls of the tent. We also remotely angled all the boxes from flat to a pre-calculated array curve while they were in the air,” explains Hicks.
Conveniently moving sound equipment after it’s already flown is something that was not possible before Trinity was introduced. Because of this innovative technology, though, the team could easily focus the sound in the Troubadour Stage’s long, domed tent for an optimal audio experience.
