Reading and Leeds festivals take place over the three-day August bank holiday weekend. All the acts that play at one site perform at the other on a different day of the weekend. And while the acts playing on the Festival Republic, BBC Introducing and Alternative stages may not have quite the global pulling-power of those on the biggest stages, the sheer amount of different performers make them an essential stopping point for festival goers.
At both Reading and Leeds sites ESS supplied the Festival Republic stage with a PM5D-RH at FOH and an M7CL-48 on monitors, the Alternative stage with an M7CL-48 at FOH and an LS9-32 on monitors and an LS9-32 to cover both FOH and monitors on the BBC Introducing stage.
"There are a lot of variables involved in all three stages," says ESS's Phil McDaniel. "Although each one is ostensibly the same at both venues, things like the slope of the ground and relative position of the stage on the site can be different. It all has an effect on the sound. There is a wide variety of acts and also a lower dB limit at Reading than at Leeds. So, with the extremely short changeover times, it's quite a challenge."
The ability to pre-programme, configure and recall specific pre-set desk scenes is especially important at the Alternative stage because the acts differ wildly - from bands to stand-up comedians, spontaneous chat show-type events, even burlesque wrestling in-the-round.
Meanwhile, a particular challenge of the BBC Introducing stage is that the FOH mix position is sidestage. The fact that the ESS team can present the engineer with his final mix from the previous site is appreciated.
"During the first half of the day, it's unusual for acts to have their own front of house engineers, but later in the evening every band will have their own engineer. Some bring monitor engineers, many don't," says McDaniel.
"But our guys are so familiar with getting the best from the consoles that it's never a problem. We just get stuck in and the Yamaha desks also have the advantage of being very easy to teach. The PM5D and M7-CL are now so ubiquitous that very few people haven't used them.
(Jim Evans)
