The Seoul World DJ Festival (SWDF), which kicks off Korea's music event calendar, has been growing in strength every year, since its first edition in 2007. Today, it attracts some of the best EDM DJs in the world, and transforms the town of Chuncheon and its Song-Am Sports Complex. This year's bill included Blasterjaxx, Tomswon, Julian Jordan and KSHMR.
In 2016, an important liaison was made with influential EDM producers Q Dance from Holland (Qlimax, Defqon, Tomorrowland) who collaborated on this year's festival. Q Dance brought its hallmarks of dynamic staging, pyro and impressive sound/lighting to the stadium, as well as two well-known DJs from its stable, Atmozfear and Noisecontroller.
Leading sound rental company Way Audio handles the PA requirement for the World DJ Festival, the only production supplier to keep its contract for the full ten years. As the event has grown, so too have the PA designs. Way Audio was an early pioneer of Nexo's STM modular line array systems, which have proved ideal for the EDM material and stadium location of the SWDF.
This year, Way Audio implemented one of the largest STM system configurations, using arrays of 21x STM M46 main plus B112 bass cabinets, delivering high SPL coverage over the wide audience area. Twenty-one STM S118 subs, groundstacked on each side, were boosted by another 12x CD18 subs in front of the centre stage, to provide "a goose bumps performance", according to James Lee of A-Works, the Nexo distributor and support centre in Korea.
The on-stage monitoring is all important for the star DJs at the SWDF, and the system of choice is groundstacks of STM, each built with three STM M28 compact modules on top of a S118 sub. These groundstacks are supplemented by Nexo PS15s. The entire PA system is powered by Nexo's Universal Amp Racks (11x NUARs), each containing two NXAMP4x4 amplifiers.
For James Lee, the best victory of the show was in the verdict of the Q Dance team, currently on a world tour and using Nexo STM for the first time. "The Q Dance team usually get the system they ask for on their rider, and were a bit suspicious when they saw Nexo STM for the first time. But the show was such a success, they gave it the thumbs-up."
(Jim Evans)
