The annual Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) electronic dance festival in late June at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway attracted more than 100,000 on each night of its run, with the bassPOD stage, which showcases a distinct heavy bass music genre that attracts serious fans of low frequencies, outfitted with a system headed by PK Sound Trinity large-format line arrays.
A key requirement is keeping sound as tightly focused in the stage area as possible and minimizing spillage to adjacent stages and spaces. Arlen Cormack, from the team of sound engineers for bassPOD, explains: “With eight stages packed inside the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, one of (producer) Insomniac’s main priorities was to keep the energy high on the dance floor without spilling onto the other stages on either side.”
Cormack and his team utilized Trinity’s 3D Wavefront Control to help define the sound field to the venue conditions. “Getting the array up quickly gave us the time to focus the sound exactly where the producers wanted it,” he notes.
Specifically, utilizing PK Sound Kontrol software from a laptop, the engineers could quickly define the horizontal and vertical dispersion characteristics. A push of a button engaged Trinity’s internal actuators, shaping the array while flown. “The effect was more dramatic than I’d ever imagined,” Cormack states. “You could almost draw a line as you stepped in and out of the edge of the sound field on each side of the stage”
“When we first turned on the PA, I was concerned because the speaker towers were set really far upstage,” says Rory Stewart, who shared front of house duties at the bassPOD stage with PJ Miller. “The DJ position was almost in front of the PA and, because of Trinity’s really wide coverage angle, it was very loud inside the DJ booth. DJs know how hard it is to mix like this because the PA and headphones would have at least 40 ms of delay.
“Usually the only option is to turn up the DJ monitor system way too loud in order to overpower the main PA,” Stewart continues. “Instead, I asked the system tech to focus Trinity outward and slightly off the center of the stage. That reduced the level on stage by at least 10 dB.”
After a successful first night, Miller adds, “We noticed the audience was extending farther out to the sides of the stage than planned. The next day during sound check, we re-focused the horizontal waveguides and opened up the sound field another 10 degrees on each side. It was just the perfect amount to cover the extra fans who needed great sound, but not bleed over into the other stages.”
Trinity was able to respond to the demanding conditions of the venue quickly and easily, he continues. “The best part of Trinity is that vertical and horizontal angles can be applied and, if the tech is unsatisfied, these angles can be adjusted instantly. On any other traditional array, the boxes would have to be lowered and angles changed manually. Truly, Trinity is the most flexible array on the market.”
The system at the bassPOD stage incorporated 32 Trinity line array modules joined by 69 PK Sound CX800 dual 18-inch subwoofers at the front of the stage along with four CX800 subwoofers and six VX10 loudspeakers. Eight SW215 stage wedges supported the vocals.
Forrest Hunt, executive producer for Insomniac, states, “Working with PK’s new Trinity system on the bassPOD stage this year was an absolute pleasure. I wanted a system that could deliver the intensity of the music but still control the sound so that it did not spill over into the other stages which are packed pretty close together.
“The system focused the energy cleanly and clearly onto the dance floor and we received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback about the sound quality over the weekend.”