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SWG Events partners with 22live to deploy Martin Audio WPL for BS3 Festival and Kings of Leon

SWG Events joined forces with Martin Audio network partner 22live recently to field eighty premium loudspeakers from the British manufacturer at Ashton Gate, home of Bristol City FC, over one weekend.

The Saturday event, called “Ashton Gate Presents BS3”, saw American singer-songwriter Ne-Yo headlining a 10-act bill that included Craig David, Jess Glynne, Dizzee Rascal, DJ Spoony, and Roni Size, in front of a 27,000-capacity crowd. The staging then changed for the Sunday, which saw Kings of Leon playing the venue as part of their “Can We Please Have Fun” world tour.

SWG Events’ head of sound, Simon Purse, explains the PA design which he had overseen: left and right main PA comprised drops of sixteen WPL, supported by two outhangs of twelve elements in each. There were a further two delay towers of twelve drops each, making a total complement was eighty WPL line array cabinets deployed. These were driven in 2-box resolution from Martin Audio’s process-controlled iKon amplifiers. A further 24 of the smaller Martin Audio WPS arrays provided frontfills, with Torus on sidefills and XE500s as optional reference monitors for those artists not on IEM.

Reproducing the low frequencies were a total of forty SXH218 - thirty in a split broadside array across the front of the stage, to enable a stage thrust to move in on the Sunday, with a further three in each delay position and a monitor for the DJ. Simon Purse’s original CAD design was transposed into Martin Audio’s D3 software, where system tech Ryan Bass took over. “I made a few tweaks, but everything was largely based on Simon’s original design”, he says.

Purse adds that the biggest challenge had been in mitigating typical stadium reflections: “There were a lot of hard surfaces, a lot of weird roofs, strange reflective screens that we had to try and avoid. We used Martin Audio’s modelling software to optimise where and how we deployed and pointed the system. At the same time we used ‘Hard Avoid’ (in the D3 software) in the areas that we were actively trying to get rid of. So a mixture of PA design and software enabled us to achieve full system optimisation once everything was in place.”

(Photos: Ryan Bass)

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