The Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) touched down once again at the Las Vegas Speedway to celebrate its 20th year, with sellout crowds of over 135,000 per day joining in the celebration.
For the second consecutive year PK Sound brought along Trinity for 2 of the 7 stages at EDC Vegas.
The bassPOD stage sound system consisted of 32 Trinity (16 modules per side) and 69 dual 18-inch CX800 subwoofers, with an additional 10 Trinity modules (5 per side) for delays behind front of house. The Wasteland stage system consistied of 30 Trinity (15 modules per side), and 48 dual 18-inch CX800 subwoofers. For Trinity and the PK Sound team, each stage presented unique scenarios in size and scope.
All of the stages at EDC hosted sound systems within close proximity to one another—sound bleed was a factor. PK’s audio engineers utilized Trinity and its newly launched companion software, Kontrol, to make on-the-fly adjustments as conditions changed.
At the bassPOD stage, sound was tightly focused to the anticipated audience area; however as the crowd increased in size, the decision to widen the sound field to cover a larger area was an easy one to implement. A few key strokes from front of house widened the horizontal directivity instantly, allowing full coverage for the larger crowd.
PJ Miller, sound engineer with PK said “Initially we’d focused the sound field to the dance floor area of the stage, right to the outer perimeter. But after the first night we noticed that the crowd was spilling out of the dance floor area and they were hearing the stage next door to us. So on night 2 we opened Trinity’s horizontal directivity right up to cover the larger audience—that eliminated the sound bleed from the other stage and the audience couldn’t have been happier.”
Musician and DJ Datsik, who played at the bassPOD stage during night 1 of EDC said, “I always love playing EDC and it’s even better now that PK and Trinity are involved. You can tell by the look on the kids’ faces that they are loving the amazing power of Trinity. On a stage that represents dynamic sound design and heavy bass, there’s no other option to get the message across loudly and clearly.”
For PK Sound, 2016 marks the official launch of Kontrol: loudspeaker management software, a tool box for the Trinity system.
Kontrol provides sound engineers with the ability to control the vertical and horizontal audio directivity, as well as system settings and live monitoring. Kontrol played a critical role in the success of Trinity at EDC. The long hours playing at full throttle in the dessert heat tested the durability of the Trinity systems at both stages. Using real-time readings, sound engineers were able to balance settings on the fly, keeping the sound powerful and clean throughout fluctuations in both temperature and humidity. “We pushed it harder than we’ve ever pushed it – and it sounded great the whole time. Being able to monitor the system live, including temperature readings, made it really easy” Says Miller.
At the Wasteland stage Trinity was playing for the first time, and the tight proximity to the other stages meant that there was no dead air between them. Kontrol software was a valuable tool for front of house engineer Austin Perkins, who said “We had to be precise with how we aimed the sound since we were in such close quarters with the other stages. With Trinity I was able to throw the sound further, hitting the very back of the crowd by focusing the top modules of the array, while aiming the right and left hand sides of the sound field to cover the sides, preventing sound bleed while keeping the audio clean and intelligible for those at the outer edges of the crowd.”
While the 20th annual EDC was one for the record books for Insomniac Events, it was one for PK Sound too, deploying 2 of its biggest Trinity systems to date. “There were some incredible sound systems at EDC: D&B, L-Acoustics and Martin Audio; however, with Trinity’s exceptional output capabilities and unique ability to focus sound, it was 2dB louder when measured at 200 feet from each stage with significantly less cabinets- and there was plenty of headroom” says PK Sound’s CEO, Jeremy Bridge.
