L-Acoustics meets Pentaport Rock challenge
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This year, it featured the industrial rock of Nine Inch Nails, the moody electronica of Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda, the shifting nuances of My Bloody Valentine, and rocking performances from local favourites including Jaurim and Daybreak. For all of the diverse styles, the L-Acoustics K1 and K2 system, supplied by local rental company Seoul Sound, delivered consistency of SPL and tonal balance across the main KB Kookmin Starshop Stage’sextensive field.
When Yescom Entertainment’s An Heung Chan accepted the role of production manager for the festival, he was both honoured and excited at the prospect of working on such a mammoth event. “We know how crazy it can be to cope with so many bands from so many different musical genres, all sharing the same stage over three days,” he says. “Dealing with schedule and set changes took a lot of time, but audio was ultimately the most important part of the production.”
With An Heung Chanhaving had many good experiences working with Seoul Sound and its L-Acoustics systems, he was confident that the company’s Kim Do Seok and his team of engineers would be a great asset to the event. “Being a sound engineer and musician myself, I had great expectations of the sound system,” he adds.
“We chose K1 and K2 because we knew it would consistently cover the entire main stage field, which is 100m wide by 160m deep,” explains Seoul Sound system engineer, Seo Hyung Man. “As always, the design we did in L-Acoustics Soundvision programme was really accurate and LA Network Manager software provided all the tools we needed through each step of the setup, tuning and monitoring in real time.”
The two main arrays for the KB Kookmin Starshop Stage each comprised 12 K1 underhung with four K2. Additional fill for the side audience was from four arrays of four of Seoul Sounds ‘faithful’ V-DOSC, whilst 12 Kara were distributed in pairs across the stage lip to cover the front rows.
With the low-end frequencies catered for by KS28 and SB28 subwoofers - 16 of each were evenly distributed across the front of the stage in cardioid mode - the system provided everything that Yescom was looking for. On stage, 14 X15 HiQ provided foldback.
(Jim Evans)
