One of the largest annual music festivals in Spain, Primavera takes place in the Parc del Forum leisure site in Barcelona, drawing audiences regularly in excess of 100,000. This year, the festival’s long-time audio provider Twin Cam Audio specified L-Acoustics for five of the festival’s seven stages, with technical director Juan Cid working closely with L-Acoustics touring application engineer Frederic Bailly on the design.
Twin Cam chose Primavera to debut its newly acquired K2 compact WST line source loudspeakers, which were deployed with K1 to provide an audio punch enabling them to offer a more powerful, accurate and versatile system.
The core main stage setup (Sony Stage) was flown with left/right arrays of 12 K1 and four K1-SB per side. Two hangs of six K1, two K1-SB and three KARA provided out fill, with ten KARA for front fill, while K2 was used for L/R delays and 22 SB28s provided low end reinforcement. Four ARCS II with a pair of SB28 subs were used for stage side fill. The entire system was powered using LA8 amplifiers.
Rafael Campos, director and owner of Twin Cam, says “It (K2) delivers an identical sonic performance to K1 in a more compact footprint. K2 is lightweight, so it’s very quick and easy to get onstage and ready to go. Primavera imposes a strict limit of 102dB at FOH, so our big challenge is to maximize those dBs at every point where there are spectators. K1 and K2 together allow us to cover the festival with the most homogenous response possible and so we get to deliver superb audio to festivalgoers, while keeping the neighbors happy.”
For the ATP Stage (second stage), two hangs of 14 K2 were deployed per side, complemented by six K1-SB with KUDO for out fills and delays. Additional stages (Vice and Pitchfork) used two complete KARA systems, and the Heineken Hidden stage were served by an ARCS WIDE and FOCUS system.
“The systems are designed, weighing every detail, to cover crowd areas like a glove,” Campos continues. “Before the show, we used L-Acoustics SOUNDVISION to predict how sound would feel in all corners of each of the five stages, allowing us to get optimal performance out of all our rigs.
“The magnitude of the transportation, the crew, and the schedules is multiplied by five here. That translates into extra stress at our end. Because K2 offers almost the same sonic signature as the K1, but with less size and weight, we are able to assure that we get those stages up and running in less time. It’s been a real revelation for our crew.
“The festival organizers have to have confidence in us, and in the product. I’m proud to say that this year, we received the highest praise ever,” Campos concludes. “The K1/K2 punch was unstoppable, and we were in a different league than the other stages—an opinion shared by all – organizers and audiences. The only question that remains from this year’s Primavera is how to better it next year.”