MIAMI — The Ultra Music Festival, an outdoor electronic music event, was held this year at Bicentennial Park in downtown Miami, Fla., and attracted 50,000 fans from around the world. Over the two-day period, the nine outdoor stages featured performances by The Cure, Carl Cox, Fatboy Slim, Paul Van Dyk, and Tiesto, among others.
The UltraLive! Main Stage used one of the largest sound systems ever assembled for the festival, anchored by arrays of 16 MILO loudspeakers per side. Additional arrays of eight MILO loudspeakers per side filled outer areas, creating a formation that covered more than 250 degrees. The secondary venue, the Carl Cox & Friends Arena, (with speakers provided by Concert Systems USA of Tampa) was powered by 12 MICA cabinets per side flown from the lighting truss, with 16 600-HP compact high-power subwoofers configured around the DJ booth, with physical spacing and delays between cabinets calculated to create a cardioids coverage pattern, and four M'elodie ultracompact high-power curvilinear array loudspeakers providing front fill. System design for both stages was accomplished with the aid of MAPP Online Pro acoustical prediction software.
Thunder Audio (Taylor, Mich.) provided the bulk of the audio equipment for the multi-stage show. Thunder Vice President Paul Owen said, “We’ve been involved with the Ultra Music Festival for the last four years, and every year we’ve used a different system, with widely varying results. This year was the first time we used the MILO system, and everything was perfect right out of the bag.”
“It’s difficult to design and compensate for the broad range of styles and genres in electronic music,” says Systems Designer Terry McNeil, who oversaw much of the sound system setup. “That’s what I love about Meyer Sound. Every system has a strong low end, but with MILO, the mids and highs are so pure I can stand 100 feet out and hear every nuance.”
More information is available at www.meyersound.com.
