According to ML Executive's Oz Bagnall, project manager and system tech for the event, the concern, as always with Prodigy, was being able to provide a system large enough and powerful enough to match their legendary onstage monitoring needs, while still offering headroom to spare. As Prodigy's FoH engineer, Jon Burton put it; "Think of it as driving an expensive car with a big engine. You don't drive it flat out all the time, but when you put your foot down, you want to feel the power as it accelerates smoothly and quickly, not hear a strange whining noise from under the bonnet! That's what I require from a PA system."
Bagnall's second concern during the design process was noise pollution. "This is a new site with very strict SPL levels, and the potential to pollute nearby residential areas was considerable," he observed. "To get around this we put together a powerful EAW KF760-based system using 40 x KF760 cabinets, and 48 x SB1000 subs. At each side of the stage we flew 20 x KF760 as high as possible on three motors using the pullback bar on the bottom to angle the array quite steeply down into the main area."
For a dance festival such as Creamfields, and especially for a band like the Prodigy, it is vital to have a lot of energy available at the low end. Bagnall therefore opted for a substantial stack of 18 x SB1000 subs per side running a conventional sub/KF760 processor configuration. For added low-end impact, the ML team added a centre stack of 12 x SB1000s, which were tuned to a much lower frequency band and driven from a separate matrix.
Jim Griffiths of newly formed consultants Vanguardia, whose task it was to ensure that noise levels were contained within the statutory limits, was very impressed by the professionalism of the crew. "It makes a huge difference to the efficacy of my job when I can work with a crew that truly understands the restrictions imposed by the site and is happy to work with them."
(Jim Evans)
