The Funktion-One Experimental Ambisonic Soundfield for The Glade Stage – Glastonbury Festival’s principal electronic and dance music stage – saw Sound-Services put in a Cadac CDC seven live sound console FOH alongside a Funktion-One Evo loudspeaker system configured for Ambisonic playback.
The Funktion-One rental house and sound production company set up a Funktion-One Evo Touring system, comprising a main-stage FOH system with four additional loudspeakers arranged in a hexagon to create the soundfield. The Experimental Ambisonic Soundfield was not a discreet configuration, but design to create locations within the soundfield, with various sounds emanating from specific locations.
The complete CDC seven mix system included a CDC I/O 6448 stagebox and CDC MC Dante Bridge. The 96 input, 56-bus CDC seven features a 36-fader, dual touchscreen hardware control surface. The consoles CDC OS, Cadac’s ‘high-agility’ swipeable graphical operator experience, is supported by the proprietary MegaComms HD audio protocol, operating with a total propagation delay from on-stage inputs to outputs, including all console processing and AD/DA conversions, in 37 samples (at 96kHz) – under 400μs. It is the industry’s lowest latency protocol. Additionally, MegaComms synchronises all audio samples before summing, resulting in absolute phase coherency at all outputs. The resulting sonic performance is described by Sound-Services’ FOH engineers, Flynn McBurney and Danny Cooklin as ‘out of this world’.
The Glade Stage hosed diverse artists, including house act Paranoid London, melodic house duo Gorgon City, rave hero A Guy Called Gerald, Steve Hillage’s cosmic trance band System 7, The Orb, prog house duo Way Out West, the dubtastic Jah Wobble & The Invaders Of The Heart, ska legends The Beat, and tech-house duo Layo and Bushwacka. Proceedings were brought to a close on Saturday night with back-to-back sets from renowned progressive house DJs Sasha and John Digweed.
‘We were nervous at first about using a brand new desk on a show of this size but after hearing it on a demo, we decided that we couldn’t do without it,’ says Sound-Services MD, Curtis Gilmore. ‘The sound is so pure and clear. It is definitely one of the best sounding shows that we have been a part of and the Cadac CDC seven played a huge part in this. We look forward to using this desk at many shows in the future.’
