Miami’s Ultra Music Festival drew thousands of music fans to Bayfront Park, woth EDM acts Krewella, Bassnectar, Porter Robinson, Die Antwoord, Big Gigantic, Chromeo and Gorgon City on the bill. Serving them all was an L-Acoustics loudspeaker system supplied by Beach Sound.
‘We’ve been doing the Ultra festival for a long time and have become very familiar with what a system needs to be able to do this kind of show right,’ says company founder and President, Andre Serafini. ‘Bayfront Park can be a challenging venue for this kind of music, but the L-Acoustics systems handled it without a problem, and even overcame some of the venue’s special challenges.’
Those challenges included keeping the sound for each stage contained within its area and avoiding spill into nearby stages. For the Live Stage, Beach Sound assembled a K2 sound system whose main array consisted of 24 K2 enclosures flown 12 per side.
‘The K2 has very precise, incredibly accurate off-axis performance, which enabled us to keep the sound on the crowd and away from any of the other nearby stages,’ Serafini explains, noting that they used L-Acoustics’ Soundvision 3D acoustical simulation software to map out the soundfield. ‘That kind of predictability is critical for a loud outdoor show like this.’
With each main array were four K1-SB high power subwoofers per side: ‘Flown subwoofers were the key to being able to overcome the unique bass null that was created by this sort of concrete moat area in front of the stage,’ he says. ‘It was an architectural challenge that we were able to overcome with the right speakers.’
Along with a total of 32 SB28 stacked subs, the Live Stage had all the low end required. In addition, two ARCS II constant curvature line source loudspeakers were used as side fills under two SB28 subs per side; six ARCS Wide enclosures were deployed as front fills; and, finally, 24 Kara enclosures were used for out fill. Onstage, 12 115XT HiQ active stage monitors joined several Kara enclosures to provide DJ foldback. ‘L-Acoustics speakers, especially Kara, have become ‘the standard’ for EDM stage monitoring and were specifically requested by the artists for the DJ sets,’ Serafini sats.
L-Acoustics speakers were used on all of the stages at Ultra, but it was the K2s first use as the Live Stage PA: ‘It had the power we needed, but it was also a beautiful-sounding PA system,’ Serafini says. ‘That’s the word that comes to mind first: beautiful. It’s a sound you never get tired of hearing.’
