One of today’s most successful festival franchises, the first Electric Daisy Carnival took place in 1997 and has since expanded with events throughout the U.S. and beyond, including Mexico, Puerto Rico and England, with plans to launch festivals in late 2015 and mid-2016 in Brazil and Japan. The focus is electronic dance music (EDM) with the throbbing beats of these rave-style events carrying on throughout the night, accompanied by elaborate lighting displays, carnival rides, fireworks, pyrotechnics and more, creating a dazzling experience of sights and sound.
For Electric Daisy Carnival 2015 in Las Vegas, held June 19 to 21, festival promoters Insomniac Productions returned to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway on the city’s outskirts to showcase a splendid array of top names in the EDM community, performing on eight stages from 7 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. each night. Clearly, there was a lot going on, but our interest was piqued by PK Sound’s new Trinity line array, which was given a trial by fire (literally) amid the blazing pyrotechnics surrounding the event’s massive BassPOD stage.
The Trinity Approach
A key aspect that sets Trinity apart from other line arrays is its employment of motorized actuators that allow users to adjust vertical aiming angles between cabinets in a hanging array via remote control — even while suspended. Trinity also provides remote control of horizontal dispersion, continuously variable from 60 to 120 degrees in 5-degree/side increments, either symmetrically or asymmetrically. This way, dispersion can be tightened up in the upper cabinets requiring longer throws and widened for enclosures towards the bottom of the hang.
Having previously worked with PK Sound, the promoters felt confident about giving the company a thumbs up to put its new Trinity technology to use for its new BassPOD stage.
“Insomniac invited us back to work with them this year on their most ambitious stage yet,” said PK Sound CEO Jeremy Bridge. “Insomniac needed a system for the BassPOD stage that would provide the audience with an amazing and powerful sound experience. Everything about BassPOD was brand new this year, from the stage design, pyro and lighting, to Trinity, and we couldn’t think of a better opportunity to premiere the system.”
The Rig
The mains system for the BassPOD stage was comprised of two left/right hangs, having on each side 16 Trinity line arrays — each a three-way, double-12 box with 2,700 watts (AES) of onboard triamplification.
Front fills were handled by five PK Sound conventional VX12 single-12, powered three-way line array, while two delay towers located behind the FOH position each had hangs of six VX12’s per side. Low-end (and lots of it) is a critical element in any EDM event, and here, 69 PK Sound CX800 double-18 subwoofers were deployed across the face of the stage, with 23 stacks of three used in a quarter-wave spacing arrangement.
The entire rig was supplied by PK Sound. The system design was by PK’s Jeremy Bridge, with Arlen Cormack, PJ Miller and Rory Stewart.
“People come to Insomniac events with the expectation that they will hear the best audio in the world, and they are never let down,” Bridge explains. “EDM music is extremely complex — it generates high pressures that would tax other systems. Poorly designed loudspeakers will distort the sound and generate anomalies that impact the audience’s experience. Trinity is designed for all music genres, and handles the power of EDM especially well.”
Trinity’s patented 3D Wavefront Control lets users focus the sound field in all three dimensions, remotely and in real-time. From a laptop running Kontrol™ software, sound engineers can control both the vertical and horizontal dispersion of the array. Yet despite that flexibility, the emphasis of the speaker development was on audio quality from day one.
“We designed Trinity, first and foremost, with high quality transparent sound in mind,” Bridge explains. “We first tackled the task of making the system sound amazing, we then applied new technology within the defined acoustic parameters, not the other way around. That approach took much longer, but the bottom line is that as a loudspeaker, sound has to be the number one priority. With today’s innovations and cutting-edge technology at our fingertips, it’s very easy for sound engineers to get swept away in the design of new tools and lose focus on what really matters — great transparent sound.”
Plaudits All Around
Evidently, this approach was well-received by both the fans and the client, according to Bridge. “The response from the producers of the show was overwhelmingly positive. We couldn’t be happier. The world’s best sound systems were at EDC, and everyone agreed that Trinity stood up to the challenge. There were a number of very positive comments that it was the most controlled system at EDC, keeping the sound focused within the perimeter of the stage. It’s our job to connect the artist and the audience and that takes more than equipment or technology — it takes people who care and put 130-percent into every personal interaction and step in the process.”
For more information about Trinity, visit PK Sound at www.pksound.ca
