Mayday consisted of three separate dance zones in the Westfalenhallen, a multi-purpose indoor events centre. The largest was held in the 13,000-capacity indoor cycle racetrack, while two smaller areas accommodated around 5,000 people each. The Cohedra system was rigged in Area 3, which hosted a plethora of German DJs as well as Detroit techno legend Jeff Mills and Norwegian musician/production team Röyksopp. HK Audio's Jorg Knieschewski, who spent more than two years conducting the acoustic engineering for Cohedra, configured the system into four identical towers in each corner of the dancefloor. Each tower consisted of four CDR 208 T and four CDR 208 S mid/high cabinets with eight CDR 210 Sub subwoofers and four SL218 passive sub-bass units, each powered by two PR16 Power Racks, preconfigured and preinstalled to drive Cohedra. The total system provided Area 3 with 78,000W of amplifier power.
"I predicted the angles of curvature with HK's CAPS Aiming Software before rigging the clusters," explains Knieschewski. "The hall's relatively low ceiling didn't allow a great flying height, so I decided that the upper five cabinets should stay flat without any curving, with just the lower three being angled. This allowed a maximum flat SPL response on the dancefloor."
After the towers were rigged, Knieschewski carried out some measurements to set the correct time alignment from all the cabinets and to select the crossover frequency for the sub-lows, following this with intensive listening tests to confirm the chosen settings. "The technical crew at Mayday event said in unison that it sounded like they were listening to the music on huge headphones," he says. "As a designer of the Cohedra system I'm obviously very pleased when it makes people who work with or listen to it happy."
(Lee Baldock)
