[ATTACH=CONFIG]202812.vB5-nodeid=202812[/ATTACH]The incredible world of Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) touched down once again at the Las Vegas Speedway to celebrate its 20th year under the electric sky, and for the second consecutive year PK Sound brought along Trinity for the ride. EDC is well known for enchanting all the senses with monumental stages, mesmerising lighting and pyrotechnics, a vibrant carnival atmosphere, beautiful people and the best sound in the world. This year was one for the record books, sellout crowds of over 135,000 per day packed the speedway to join in the celebration.
Trinity is the world’s first advanced robotic line array and PK deployed the sound system at 2 of the 7 stages at EDC Vegas this year. For its second consecutive year, Trinity powered the bassPOD stage—well known as a proving ground for bass music, and home to its most loyal fans and artists. The bassPOD sound system consisted of 32 Trinity (16 modules per side) and 69 dual 18″ CX800 subwoofers, with an additional 10 Trinity modules (5 per side) for delays behind front of house. The Wasteland stage, powered by Trinity for the first time, is home to hard style and cutting edge dance music. Wasteland hosted a system consisting of 30 Trinity (15 modules per side), and 48 dual 18″ CX800 subwoofers. For Trinity and the PK Sound team, each stage presented unique scenarios in size and scope.
All of the stages at EDC hosted monumental sound systems, and all were within close proximity to one another—sound bleed was a factor. PK’s audio engineers utilized Trinity and its newly launched companion software, Kontrol, to make on-the-fly adjustments as conditions changed. At the bassPOD stage, sound was tightly focused to the anticipated audience area; however as the crowd increased in size, the decision to widen the sound field to cover a larger area was an easy one to implement. A few key strokes from front of house widened the horizontal directivity instantly, allowing full coverage for the larger crowd.
PJ Miller, Sound Engineer with PK said “Initially we’d focused the sound field to the dance floor area of the stage, right to the outer perimeter. But after the first night we noticed that the crowd was spilling out of the dance floor area and they were hearing the stage next door to us. So on night 2 we opened Trinity’s horizontal directivity right up to cover the larger audience—that eliminated the sound bleed from the other stage and the audience couldn’t have been happier.”
Musician and DJ Datsik, who played a colossal set on Trinity at the bassPOD stage during night 1 of EDC said, “I always love playing EDC and it’s even better now that PK and Trinity are involved. You can tell by the look on the kids’ faces that they are loving the amazing power of Trinity. On a stage that represents dynamic sound design and heavy bass, there’s no other option to get the message across loudly and clearly!”
For PK Sound, 2016 marks the official launch of Kontrol: loudspeaker management software, a tool box for the Trinity system. Kontrol provides sound engineers with the ability to control the vertical and horizontal audio directivity, as well as system settings and live monitoring. Kontrol played a critical role in the success of Trinity at EDC. The long hours playing at full throttle in the dessert heat tested the durability of the Trinity systems at both stages. Using real-time readings, sound engineers were able to balance settings on the fly, keeping the sound powerful and clean throughout fluctuations in both temperature and humidity. “We pushed it harder than we’ve ever pushed it – and it sounded great the whole time. Being able to monitor the system live, including temperature readings, made it really easy” Says PJ.
At the Wasteland stage Trinity was playing for the first time, and the tight proximity to the other stages meant that there was no dead air between them. Kontrol software was a valuable tool for Front of house engineer Austin Perkins, who said “We had to be precise with how we aimed the sound since we were in such close quarters with the other stages. With Trinity I was able to throw the sound further, hitting the very back of the crowd by focusing the top modules of the array, while aiming the right and left hand sides of the sound field to cover the sides, preventing sound bleed while keeping the audio clean and intelligible for those at the outer edges of the crowd.”
While the 20th annual EDC was one for the record books for Insomniac Events, it was one for PK Sound too, deploying 2 of its biggest Trinity systems to date. The bassPOD and Wasteland stages kept the show going throughout the night as the sellout crowds danced until sunrise to their favorite artists. Trinity performed flawlessly. “There were some incredible sound systems at EDC: D&B, L-Acoustics and Martin Audio; however, with Trinity’s exceptional output capabilities and unique ability to focus sound, it was 2dB louder when measured at 200 feet from each stage with significantly less cabinets- and there was plenty of headroom” says PK Sound’s CEO, Jeremy Bridge.
[HR][/HR]ABOUT PK SOUND
PK Sound is an owner-operated audio manufacturing and production company headquartered in Calgary, AB, Canada, with offices in San Francisco, CA, USA and Victoria, BC, Canada. PK Sound was born out of the marriage of acoustical engineering and human emotion, in facilitation of the connection between artist and fan. We measure performance as much in the reaction of a devoted fan as in the read-out of a lab instrument. In all we do, wherever the PK logo appears, there can be no compromise, and no end in our desire to achieve new standards of performance, better ways of collaboration, and new avenues of innovation to advance industry technology for all.
