English singer-songwriter Calum Scott recently performed for a full crowd at the Zevenwacht Wine Estate in Cape Town, South Africa as part of his “Bridges” album tour joined by local artists Craig Lucas and Werner Bekker, with support by production company ULTRA Events deploying a main sound reinforcement system utililzing a range of d&b audiotechnik compoments to serve an audience of 2,000.
“Zevenwacht Wine Estate is an interesting venue, as the front row is at stage height and the back row rises to an elevation of 8-meters due to a natural slope,” explains Costa Champanis, owner of ULTRA Events. “The brief was to provide great sounding audio for all guests, from the front row to the back row.”
ULTRA specified a main PA system consisting of 12 d&b V8 mid-high loudspeakers left and right supplemented by 12 B22 subwoofers in a spaced CSA array. d&b M4 loudspeakers were deployed as frontfills and monitors, with all loudspeakers driven by d&b D80 power amplifiers.
“On the day, we did not have enough time to do a site inspection and had to quickly redesign the stage position due to weather and increased ticket sales. Therefore, we needed to redefine the parameters on setup day,” notes ULTRA Events audio HOD Patrick Dudgeon. “There were also noise restrictions at the venue with residential areas close by, but we could easily verify the array and subwoofer positions with the R1 software at low volume”, explains Patrick. “Inclement weather disrupted our ability to properly tune the system, but by defining the venue layout, as well as the prediction of the system response and relative delay times, it allowed us to open up a PA system that was close to perfect.”
With the weather finally clearing, the ULTRA team handed over the system to the artists’ sound engineers to kick off the event. “After only a few minutes of tuning, we were ready to hand the PA over to Calum Scott’s sound engineer for him to create his magic – he was suitably impressed,” concludes Dudgeon. “The venue was filled to capacity and the system performed beautifully, whilst the crowd enjoyed a memorable evening.”
