Billed as ‘a rock festival designed for rock fans by rock fans’, the UK’s three-day Ramblin Man Fair is an annual music festival celebrating classic and contemporary rock, progressive rock, blues and country music.
Promoted by Spirit Of Rock, it set up for a third year in Maidstone’s Mote Park, where Capital Sound provided the audio infrastructure for the first time – and was eager to demonstrate the power of Martin Audio’s MLA PA system. Project Manager Robin Conway secured the contract after meeting with the event’s Technical Production Manager, Kev Sutherland. ‘I think he was impressed that we were able to come up with a total production package built around MLA,’ he says.
Capital provided sound reinforcement for all four stages but it was the Main Stage (Planet Rock) hosting acts including ZZ Top, Saxon, Extreme and Glenn Hughes, that benefitted from MLA. With tem MLA elements each side supplemented by an MLD Downfill at the base of each hang for the main LR PA, a further 13 MLX subwoofers provided a ‘castled’ broadside cardioid array. Eight W8LM Mini Line Arrays provided front fill, while onstage 14 LE1500 monitors provided the bands’ reference sound alongside WS218X sub and other side fills. With a 70m throw no delay points were necessary.
Capital also provided a consolidated Dante system drive, with Lake LM44 processors and BSS Soundweb Blu-806 switcher – plus an array of digital desks.
The site itself was described as a contained amphitheatre-style bowl, but with a residents home in the direct line of fire of main stage, propagation issues had to be dealt with (complying with offsite levels set by consultants Aria Acoustics). Experienced system tech Joseph Pearce was able to programme a series of optimisations in the dedicated Display software to handle all eventualities with ease.
‘Everyone was delighted with the sound and all the headliners achieved the levels they were hoping for,’ Conway reports. ‘The sound couldn’t have been any better. You always want to give bands the best level you can – and we achieved that.’
He also commended the scale of the stage – a Star Events 20m VerTech stage – that afforded plenty of room to manoeuvre and to position the large sub array without compromise.
Other crew on duty were FOH tech Micky Griffiths, who mixed many of the acts; George Breacker and Matteo Noviello (monitor techs) and Harry McCann and Finlay Watt (PA/stage techs). Overall production manager was Rachel King.
