TPi Magazine – August 2019

The event marked the second year of a

groundbreaking five-year partnership

that aims to leverage the strengths of the

iconic music festival and the supplier of

professional audio systems to elevate the

festival experience for artists, fans, and

technology providers.

Now in its 49th year, the Roskilde Festival

is massive in scale: This year’s events took

place over eight days from 29 June to 6

July and showcased nearly 180 acts across eight stages – from big-name

headliners Cardi B, Bob Dylan, Travis Scott, Janelle Monáe, Robert Plant,

and Wu-Tang Clan, to Scandinavian superstars Robyn and MØ, to emerging

regional artists, performing to daily crowds topping 130,000.

But Roskilde is about much more than music, camping, and fun.

The festival, which operates as a non-profit foundation, is a celebration

of community and solidarity – ideals fostered year round through the

generous support of humanitarian and cultural organisations in Denmark

and beyond. Since its inception, the Roskilde Festival Charity Society has

generated more than $58 million for charities around the globe.

It’s these values that make the Roskilde Festival an ideal partner in the

pursuit of providing a better festival experience, said Meyer Sound Executive

Vice President Helen Meyer. “This is a festival with a heart,” she began. “They

really care about what it feels like for ever yone and they’re willing to do

things differently to anyone else, and for us, that’s ver y, ver y exciting.”

The partnership is a year-round collaboration focusing on education

initiatives, R&D, and large-scale festival management. For partners steeped

in common traditions of creativity and innovation, this multifaceted

approach provides an unprecedented opportunity to innovate and

inform, with the event ser ving as both a technology showcase and a

living laborator y where research efforts focus on sound propagation and

management techniques.

With a total area stretching more than 2.5 million square metres – the

equivalent of 350 football pitches – there’s a lot of ground to cover at

Roskilde, and a lot of potential cross-talk between stages that needs to be

controlled. Nearly 1,000 Meyer Sound loudspeakers, supplied by European

AVL integrator Bright Group, were deployed across all festival stages and

performance spaces, from the 1,000-capacity Gloria stage to the iconic

Orange main stage, with its staggering 60,000 capacity.

LEO Family systems provided seamless solutions for the event, thanks

to their clarity, linearity, reliability, and ease of use. “The LEO Family was

developed to create an idea that linear theor y applied to systems like these

would mean that you could do a variety of stages with different kinds and

sizes of equipment and keep the same sound,” said Meyer Sound President

and CEO John Meyer. “This allows people to understand you don’t have to

run it so loud all the time. What we’re tr ying to show here is that the sound

system should be transparent.”

The Roskilde stages were powered by the entire LEO Family, including

LINA, LEOPARD, LEO and LYON arrays and 750-LFC, 900-LFC, and 1100-LFC

low-frequency control elements, with VLFC very-low-frequency control

elements adding bone-shaking low-end impact.

Numerous point source loudspeakers including UPA-1P and the

brand-new ULTRA-X40 – which was also used as main field monitors at

FOH – provided delay and front fill support, while MJF-210s ser ved as stage

ROSKILDE

Meyer Sound returns to Denmark as the exclusive sound provider for the

Roskilde Festival, Northern Europe’s largest and longest-running music festival.

ROSKILDE