The new Lonely Hearts Club, an art deco-styled stage making its debut in the Silver Hayes area at this year’s edition of the Glastonbury festival in England, was equipped by NSL Productions with a sound reinforcement system utilizing Void Acoustics loudspeakers and subwoofers.
“Although we have worked at Glastonbury previously, this was our first year working in the Silver Hayes area” explains Tom Broughton, director, NSL Productions. “Our engagement was a result of the great relationship we have built with [festival production group] Team Love from working in close co-operation with them at other festivals including ‘Love Saves the Day’ in Bristol where the Lonely Hearts Club first made its debut.
“Given our previous large-scale stage productions with Team Love, we got involved in this project from the very early stages as some careful planning was required.”
The brief was precise and included the requirement for the system to be scalable for an average audience size of 5,000 rising to a maximum capacity of 7,000 for headliners. The audio design also had to consider the proximity of off-site noise monitoring points across the Greenfield site and the strict sound limits and reductions after midnight while working ralongside the other two stages within Silver Hayes.a
“We were asked to design a scalable and controllable front of house system which was why we installed two hangs of 10 fixtures per side of Void’s Arcline 8, split into three zones, supported by a central block of 12 Stasys 218 in a delayed horizontal array,” Broughton says. “And it worked perfectly. We knew that deploying a Void Acoustics system would cover this size of audience and permit us to provide a contained system to maximise levels in the key audience area, whilst dropping off quickly ‘off axis’.”
The FOH and monitoring package needed to be versatile to work with celebrity DJs, live bands as well as singers and MCs. “We achieved this with wheeled stacks of Stasys 118 and the instantly recognizable Air Vantage speakers on stage to act as DJ monitors, side fills, drum fills – whatever was needed really,” he notes. “A zoned array out front allowed us to push the top sections for the bigger crowds for the headliners.
“A gig of this magnitude needed a system that was both versatile, and malleable, yet provide the transparent sound that the Arcline system offers. That, along with the level of DSP control afforded by the Bias Q5 amplifiers (which the whole system was run off) are invaluable for the myriad of engineers, DJs and acts using the system.”
Dave Harvey from Team Love was enthusiastic about their engagement of NSL Productions for this festival installation: “We work with NSL regularly and they are bloody great! The sound is top notch — the Lonely Hearts Club sounded absolutely amazing across everything and working with the team is always a pleasure,” he says. “A massive thanks to everyone involved and we look forward to the next installment.”
