In anticipation of a busy summer festival season, dBS Solutions has invested further in Martin Audio’s Wavefront Precision line array series with the largest format speaker – the WPL – taking the company’s WP box count to 136.
The company had already increased its stock of Martin Audio’s compatible iK42 multichannel DSP amplifiers, in order to reconfigure larger racks for greater efficiency and faster load-ins.
MD Chris Bogg says that, having enjoyed two successful seasons with WPC, this year it was pre-booked on a summer tour. ‘This left us with a bit of a shortfall, so it was a question of whether we invested further in WPC, or look at the larger box and prepare ourselves for our future.’
dBS had experienced excellent results with WPC at events up to 65m throw distance before delays were required: ‘But there were a couple of jobs last year where we sub-hired MLA or WPL to achieve a greater distance without delays – so we’re familiar with what the larger box could do for us,’ Bogg says.
He also emphasised that for a number of events they have run WPC in one-box resolution to mitigate offsite noise and help improve the evenness of coverage. However they had started investing further in iKon amplifiers even before the WPL arrived.
‘Previously all our racks were configured the same way with three iK42,’ dBS Solutions Operations Manager, James Roberts, explains. ‘But now, with the bigger systems expected to go out regularly on festivals and arenas, we’ve built up some six-way racks that are pre-configured, and allow us to easily roll in a package for the greater efficiency at bigger festivals and arena shows.’
They note that some arenas are notoriously poorly designed acoustically ‘and so being able to hard avoid the ceilings makes all the difference’. The AO Arena, to whom dBS is contracted, is one venue that WPL will be regularly visiting this year.
All of which will give the company enormous flexibility over the summer. ‘Even in two-box resolution the coverage is the smoothest I’ve heard,’ Bogg says. ‘Aside from WPL’s sonic clarity, he says dBS is rapidly building a reputation for taking on tricky sites where noise propagation is an issue. He cites the following example:
‘Last year we did an event at Leazes Park in Newcastle where the offsite noise was a real issue – it was only 350m from the stage to the nearest residence. The guys doing the noise control did some calculations with another brand in Noise Calc and thought they might get 96-98dB max at FOH. But we did WPC in one-box resolution and got 103dB at FOH – and it still measured less than 65dB at the nearest residence. When you put it in one-box res and use all the tools available, it really is quite powerful.’
Chris Bogg observes that the company has virtually doubled its stock capacity: ‘We could now easily do two decent size festivals and have a tour or smaller indoor show out. It means we can quote for bigger events generally, and festivals that we wouldn’t have had access to before are right in our wheelhouse.’
