d&b Soundscape delivers an enhanced live sound experience for touring front of house engineers, artists,
and musically inquisitive audiences at the 2019 UK incarnation of art and music festival, WOMAD.WOMAD
The WOMAD d&b Soundscape stage line-up
featured some of the most inspiring artists
and performances of this year’s festival,
including the acoustic mastery of Saving
Grace feat. Robert Plant, drum and bass
DJ LTJ Bukem, Kenya’s Muthoni Drummer
Queen, and Roosevelt Collier, whose blues,
rock and gospel sound was described as
‘dirty funk swampy grime’.
The d&b Soundscape stage is the result
of a relationship between Real World Records – the music label owned
by the founder of WOMAD, Peter Gabriel – and the d&b team. Born from
a mutual ambition to enhance the sound experience at WOMAD for both
artist and audience, using a d&b Soundscape system.
Positioned prominently within the main arena site in Charlton Park,
Wiltshire, the Soundscape stage held capacity audiences of over 4,000
people and was created to galvanise WOMAD’s mission to be the ‘best
sounding festival’ featuring ‘the best music you’ve never heard’, and
curated to give acts from around the world a space to showcase their
landscape of genre-diverse sounds.
“This stage was special, because of the the incredible sound experience
that was created,” says Chris Smith, Festival Director. “WOMAD is a festival
for music lovers, but it’s also about innovation in music and technology
and now we have one of the finest sound systems in the world.”
At the heart of the d&b Soundscape stage arena setup was d&b V10P
loudspeakers for the main system, and Y10P loudspeakers hung at regular
inter vals around the tent, which measured more than 60m across. d&b E8
loudspeakers were used as front fills with a sub array mixture of V-SUBs and
SL-SUBs. The entire system was driven by 18 d&b D80 amplifiers.
The d&b DS100 signal engine, the network-controlled, Dante-enabled
DSP platform for Soundscape, ser ved all of the object-based mixing,
room acoustic emulations and system matrix functions. It was also
interfaced with the array of different console surfaces required for the
busy festival environment.
This was all integrated with the d&b R1 Remote control software and
a Soundscape touchscreen, facilitating simple operation to enhance the
mix graphically, channel by channel, loudspeaker by loudspeaker, group
by group.
While mostly invisible within the tent set up, the system effortlessly
delivered significant SPL with a wide screen, high definition sound that
was able to be driven by each of the touring engineers to suit their needs,
whether fully immersive 360 or using 180 focused frontal arrays only.
“Our relationship with WOMAD allows us to offer international artists
and engineers exposure to a system concept that is changing the nature of
the way sound can be delivered for events of all scales, programmes and
purposes.” Stephen ‘Oggi’ Hogg, d&b UK Managing Director, comments,
“Combining the creativity of the performers with the flexibility of the sound
design inspires a whole new dimension of experience for the festival.”
TPi
Photo: York Tillyer
http://www.womad.co.uk
http://www.dbaudio.comWOMAD