Marking the beginning of the 2018 festival season, PK Sound recently touched down south for its third year in a row at Insomniac’s 2-day, massive outdoor festival.
With the help of its rental network partners PK provided the sound system for the main stage, “kineticFIELD”. With an immense coverage area, a desire for high SPL and even coverage as far as 700’ back the total system consisted of more than 280 loudspeakers.
The main system comprised of PK Sound 88-TRINITY and 40-VX10 used to provide an evenly distributed sound field. The low-end compliment was PK Sound 120-CX800 subwoofers which were joined by an additional PK Sound 12-GRAVITY 30 subwoofers which allowed for wide consistent coverage throughout the venue, even reaching the back of the massive crowd.
Improving on successes from previous EDC Mexico deployments, the team added to the depth and width of sound coverage by setting up a total of 12 audio hangs on stage and throughout the main event area. On stage, two main hangs and two lateral hangs each supported 14 PK Sound TRINITY line arrays each.
Approximately 220 feet from the stage hangs, mid-field coverage was accomplished with four additional hangs, each with 8 PK Sound TRINITY line arrays. Taking it even further, approximately 430 feet from the stage was another set of four hangs, each with 10 PK Sound VX10 compact line arrays.
Careful audio placement, tuning and 3D sculpting, using PKs Wavefront technology, was required to create the perfect listening environment. “We focused the top three Trinity boxes in all eight TRINITY hangs to a narrow dispersion, which increased the high frequency sensitivity and allowed each hang to cover a greater distance,” explained Arlen Cormack, VP at PK Sound.
“The two main inside Trinity hangs had to have the side closest to the VIP section focused inward to ensure the VIP attendees were only hearing the ground-stacked PK Sound VX12 boxes in conjunction with closest stage right lateral extension. We worked hard to provide the perfect balance throughout the listening areas, while at the same time avoiding coherence issues from having so many sources,” continued Arlen.
To accomplish this, engineers used PK Sound’s Kontrol software to steer the sound field away from the VIP section to eliminate the possibility of sound overlap originating from different sources.
For the VIP area itself, two ground stacks each with 6 PK Sound CX800S and 4 PK Sound VX12s each were placed directly within the VIP section.
Also in attendance was Freelance Audio Technician and Owner of D&M Pro Audio, Alexander Danielewicz who was particularly impressed with the clean and consistent coverage of the Trinity Advanced robotic line array and accompanying Gravity low-end.
“I think Trinity’s power and clarity is astonishing. Coverage is deadly accurate with the actuators and moving horns. The system definitely falls into my top four favourite rigs.” stated Alexander.
PK Sound is renowned for its deep, distortion-free low end, and as such, the production team delivered low-end frequencies on a silver platter. The 2018 event was the first time PK Sound brought its new PK Sound GRAVITY 30 subwoofers to Mexico. These complemented the main CX800 sub wall, and were placed underneath the mid-field delay towers.
