With 11 hours of music presented on eight stages each day, The Netherlands’ two-day Awakenings festival has been a Mecca for Europe’s techno DJs for the past 19 years. The past two events nave seen L-Acoustics exclusively providing sound reinforcement and monitoring on all eight stages.
With sound design, audio equipment and staff have supplied by Amsterdam-based Focus Advanced Facilities, Awakenings began as a small event, with one stage in Amsterdam’s Westergasfabriek. Today it attracts 65,000 people and more than 100 DJs to the Spaarnwoude recreational site, between Amsterdam and Haarlem.
Designated A, B, C, V, W, X, Y and Z, the stages are in a combination of tented and outdoor arenas, with V and W being the largest. Each specialises in a particular style – House, New Beat, Minimal Techno, Progressive House, Tech Trance and so on. The Focus team, led by Jurgen van de Walle, worked closely with the festival’s creative Technical Director Jasper Schimmel and their sound director Niels van Smeerdijk to ensure that the audio set up for each stage was optimised for its particular style of music, without any compromise on quality.
All areas except V and W featured LR arrays of 12 L-Acoustics K2 and V-Dosc, plus 24 SB28 subs and Kara in fills. The system for the largest open-air arena, W, comprised four hangs of 10 K1, two K1-SB and three K2, complemented by 32 ground stacked SB28 subs. V, meanwhile, had a slightly smaller system comprising four hangs of eight K1, two K1-SB and three K2, with 32 SB28s. In all locations where a throw greater than 60m was required, a Kara and SB18 delay system was added.
The DJ monitoring for all stages comprised four ARCSII and two SB28 per stage. All systems were powered by LA-Raks. In total, Focus supplied seven full trailers of L-Acoustics equipment, comprising 198 SB28, 90 K2, 80 K1, 36 Kara, 32 ARCS II, 20 V-Dosc, 16 K1-SB, 12 SB18, eight 115XT, four ARCS Wide, four ARCS Focus, two 12XT and 167 LA8 power amplifiers.
‘The festival’s sound quality received a great deal of praise on social media,’ says Rent-All’s Rene van der Linden. ‘And, thanks to the advanced technology of L-Acoustics systems, environmental noise spill was kept to an absolute minimum.’
More: www.l-acoustics.com
