Calling world music fans to Boonville, California, for nearly two decades, the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival revels in community, social and environmental responsibility and the unifying power of music.
Having provided the audio for the three-day festival for 16 years, Sacramento Production Services recently looked to Lab.gruppen amplifiers. ‘It’s our first year using the Labs and the first time we used Lake Processing on this PA. We built it and sent it out specifically for this gig,’ says Sacramento Production Services FOH engineer and system tech, Dwaine Wise.
For several years, the system has been relatively consistent, says SMS’ sales and production manager, Keith Wackford. This year it comprised 24 Martin W8LCs, 14 Martin W8LC double 18 subs and 2 Martin W8Cs as front fill. ‘All that off of just nine PLMs,’ Wackford says. ‘And everybody raved about how much more musical the PA was – plus our client said this was the best this PA ever sounded.’
In past years it took double the rack space to do the show, Wise continues. ‘Cutting down on our racks was a big thing. We used to have to roll out four of them to do 12 a side. This time, when we were packing the truck we were like, “are we forgetting something?”. Being able to monitor the amps from FOH and actually knowing exactly what’s going on – not just that an amp is clipping, for example, but why it is, and monitoring the temperature of the amps – on a summer festival gig that’s huge.’
The new amplifiers have helped Wise save time tweaking the system and streamlined his workflow substantially – they have also provided far more power than the amplifiers previously used. ‘There’s a lot of reggae on the bill, and the more volume you can get, the happier people are,’ he says. ‘Before having the PLM 20000Qs, we just didn’t have that amount of power, and to get it we’d really have had to ramp up the number of amp racks we brought out.
‘We had a band come in first thing Sunday morning and their engineer asked, “How loud can I make it?” I said, “I don’t know. Let’s see what you can do with it”. He started mixing at 120dB A-weighted at 10amsand the system just kept cruising, no problem.’
More: http://labgruppen.com
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