WOODINVILLE, WA–This year, a record crowd of 45,000 made it's way to the Creamfields festival, a UK dance event, in its new home of Daresbury Estate in the heart of the Cheshire countryside. Headlining the massive main stage this year were the Prodigy, and as headline act, the audio system was designed to meet the specification on their rider. This included a powerful EAW KF760 line array system from UK rental specialists, and long-term Prodigy suppliers, ML Executives. According to ML Executive's Oz Bagnall, project manager and system tech for the Creamfields event, the concern, as always with Prodigy, was being able to provide a system large enough and powerful enough to match their legendary onstage monitoring needs, while still offering headroom to spare. As Prodigy's FOH engineer, Jon Burton put it; "Think of it as driving an expensive car with a big engine. You don't drive it flat out all the time, but when you put your foot down, you want to feel the power as it accelerates smoothly and quickly, not hear a strange whining noise from under the bonnet! That's what I require from a PA system."
Bagnall's second concern during the design process was noise pollution. "This is a new site with very strict SPL levels, and the potential to pollute nearby residential areas was considerable," he observed. "To get around this we put together a powerful EAW KF760-based system using 40 x KF760 cabinets, and 48 x SB1000 subs. At each side of the stage we flew 20 x KF760 as high as possible on three motors using the pullback bar on the bottom to angle the array quite steeply down into the main area. In this way we were able to achieve very high SPLs for the audience whilst reducing the noise pollution off-site by a considerable margin."
For a dance festival such as Creamfields, and especially for a band like the Prodigy, it is vital to have a lot of energy available at the low end. Bagnall therefore opted for a substantial stack of 18 x SB1000 subs per side running a conventional sub/KF760 processor configuration.
For added low-end impact, the ML team added a centre stack of 12 x SB1000s, which were tuned to a much lower frequency band and driven from a separate matrix. "This allowed Jon to feed this extra reserve of energy into his mix at crucial moments during the set," explained Bagnall. "Although the restrictions didn't allow us to run the system flat out, it still delivered a high quality, extremely dynamic sound which all the engineers, not just Jon, enjoyed using on the day. From my point of view I think the KF760 is the perfect line array for these large outdoor festivals. You get a great live feel with superb detail and that bit of extra "growl" when you want it that really makes it a proper live sound."
Jim Griffiths of newly formed consultants Vanguardia, whose task it was to ensure that noise levels were contained within the statutory limits, was very impressed by the professionalism of the crew. "It makes a huge difference to the efficacy of my job when I can work with a crew that truly understands the restrictions imposed by the site and is happy to work with them. At Creamfields, ML Executives delivered an excellent package that both achieved the design criteria and gave everyone what they wanted. I heard the client saying that the whole experience rated 20 out of ten, and I'd have to agree with him!"
For more information visit: www.eaw.com.
