Having been the organising force behind festivals and bars in Namibia for a number of years, entrepreneur Jared Geyser dates his relationship with Martin Audio back to his son, Guy, leaving university in Cape Town and becoming involved in a New Year’s Eve festival a couple of years back. Shortly after, they set up Plug & Play Event Solutions in the capital of Windhoek to further their interest in PA and backline.
‘So we bought Blackline XP12 and XP118 active subs, and eventually ended up owning 20,’ Jared says. ‘While they are great speakers, they obviously couldn’t do the bigger work so we then bought a Torus system.’
The latest addition to the Plug & Play is a flagship WPC line array – 24 boxes with 12 SXH218 subs – supplied by Audiosure, Martin Audio’s South Africa distributor.
While Namibia has a vibrant dance music component it’s the festival, carnival and band work that has proven to be the more sustainable part of Plug & Play’s activities. ‘Hence the reason we have now invested in WPC and a lot of additional backline.
‘We had found the active subs were really good for our small events and could be split into multiple systems but, for bigger events, we needed to increase the PA. So we bought 12 Torus boxes – eight T1215 and four T1230 with two iKon iK42 amps.’ These were first used at Camp Rock at the beginning of the year, which required all 12 Torus boxes along with four SX218 subs. ‘I was really impressed with how just 12 of those boxes operated and so were the two engineers who came in to mix the bands,’ Guy says.
As a former German colony, Namibia stages a number of German festival carnivals during the year, most notably Windhoek Karneval, where Torus again impressed everyone.
Plug & Play’s engagement with WPC was almost stillborn, however, as they lost the event they had originally been quoting it on. ‘But we felt committed to Martin Audio, and although we naturally had reservations about moving ahead, we were persuaded to go for it… and we’re so happy we listened to that advice,’ Jared says. ‘It really moved us up a gear.’
The system debuted at the Deep Dive Seafood & Wine Festival in Windhoek. ‘We had a lot of bands from South Africa, and the guys who mixed said the sound was phenomenal – among the top three in the world.’
With the WPC came three iKon touring racks, each plugged with three iK42 process controlled amplifiers. The full array – 12-per-side – will be on regular duty during December, when several major seasonal events spanning EDM events to festivals, with up to 8,000 attending. The first, Sunset Groove on Long Beach, is followed by the Sound of Summer beach music festival a week later. This culminates in the grand Campout Dune New Year’s Eve Festival in Namibia’s National Park, featuring Kitty Amor among the headliners.
Plug & Play are keen to promote the Martin Audio brand, even selling speakers in its Groove Boutique retail store. Meanwhile, on the road theiworkload frequently takes its beyond the borders of Namibia, and into surrounding Zambia, Botswana and Zimbabwe.
More: https://martin-audio.com
