The Koka Booth Amphitheatre in Cary, North Carolina, saw the Flaming Lips perform Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots live faithfully from front to back before following up with a set drawn from their general repertoire. The long-serving band held the stage throughout, with no support act.
Hired by the venue and working with the band for the first time, Soundworks of Virginia brought with them Martin Audio’s WPC line array the amphitheatre is unique. ‘It seems they cleared just enough of the forested area to plunk down the venue and left all of the surrounding trees and foliage intact – which makes a lovely setting,’ says Soundworks Senior Tech, Bryan Hargrave. ‘Technically, loading dock, power and rigging are all straightforward and completely adequate. It was a very easy space to work in.’
They were confronted with a 5,000-strong audience out on the grass, and a 75ft travel distance from stage to FOH. ‘We shoot the PA 225ft and use the house delays for the very back of the venue,’ Hargrave says. ‘The PA will easily cover 250ft if we tell it to, but we opt to use the house delays for the last bit and that works fine.’
In this case the PA comprised 12 WPC elements per side and eight SXH218 subwoofers. For sightline purposes these were arranged four-a-side (two wide, two high) bridged. ‘The downstage is curved and has steps down to the audience level, so we were unable to place any sub arrays in front of the stage,’ Hargrave explains.
Four WPS along the front stage lip and another two on the stage left subs provided out fill to cover the asymmetrical audience arrangement, with XE500 wedge monitors and CDD-Live 15s atop SXP218s used for side fill.
Soundworks is no stranger to Koka Booth, having produced shows with Little Feat, Collective Soul, Switch Foot, Trombone Shorty and Big Boi in the past. ‘After the first time in, we had an accurate slice [calculated in Martin Audio’s proprietary Dispplay software] so it’s easy to generate the necessary files to load into the iKon amplifiers,’ Hargrave says. ‘We just change for temperature and humidity, although we may move DSP allocation for Hard Avoid based on the act, and whether they feel they are getting any slap from the back wall.’
By this he is referring to the covered bar/seating area with a wooden wall 250ft away from the stage. ‘The house has delays installed that do a pretty good job covering that area,’ he explains. ‘We stop the audience area in Dispplay in the middle of that seating area, which draws most of it in a little closer sonically without hitting the back wall too hard. If the band’s FOH tech has an issue with the slap, we will simply move the Hard Avoid from stage to the rear wall and the problem disappears.’
Hargrave says that the FOH team were excited by the rig chosen for the show but were, however, frustrated by the 95dBA limit imposed at FOH mix position, stating, ‘It’s too bad they put a governor on the Ferrari…’
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