even though they’re not an SSE account, they are trusting of what we do; another one is The Killers – they’re not one of our bands but again they love the way we work. The reputation we have with the bands is a real bonus under these circumstances.” Keeping with V tradition, all loudspeakers this year were again L-Acoustics: the main stages utilised K1 elements for the main hangs and V-DOSC for the delays; and the second stages were all V-DOSC. L-Acoustics SB28 subs were deployed for all stages, with KARA and ARCS providing infill and outfill respectively. For monitoring, SSE provided 130 of its in-house MB4 wedges.
Consoles of choice for the
flip-flops were Yamaha PM5Ds for monitors and Avid Profiles for FOH, both of which Bennett says “do just what they say on the tin”. “The [Yamaha] PM5Ds are
great because you can get them wet, you can drop them, and they’ll still work,” he states. “And a lot of FOH guys now look at the Avid Profile as the new [Midas] H3000 – they’ll see one and say, ‘Yep, that’s cool, I can work from that’.” Forty freelancers were
employed to work on V this year, and Bennett says the selection process is always fine tooth- combed to make sure everything runs as smoothly as possible.
“We have a core base of
freelancers and spend a lot of time matching personalities to
keep the workflow as efficient as possible,” he explains. “It’s all well and good selecting a FOH guy and a stage patch, but unless they’re going to get along, it’s not going to work.” Robbie McGrath, FOH engineer for headline act Stone Roses, concurs with Bennett, and says V is one of the best-run UK festivals. “I love working at V because the SSE guys really know their stuff and everything always gets done every day to a very high standard,” he says. “I also get to pump a bit of volume in too, which you can’t do at Reading. I actually ended up breaking the law for the last three numbers, but the SSE lads were really cool, as long as I kept it to around 102dBA!”
SWITZERLAND After watching excellent sets
from Ben Howard and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, it was off to FOH tower to watch The Stone Roses in action. The sound felt incredibly tight: right in your face, as if you were in an arena; and as McGrath said, it certainly got louder towards the end! “This year our project design team managed to increase SPL for the festival audience without compromise to the strict off-site licensing conditions,” concludes SSE director, Yan Stile. “This makes the audience experience that much more special, and we’ve managed to replicate this across the board at other SSE-supplied outdoor events this year.”n www.sseaudiogroup.com
livenews
The main stages featured K1 elements for the main hangs and V-DOSC for the delays
AV CONSULTANCYTingo GmbH was responsible for sound design at a presentation of La Damnation de Faust by Hector Belioz at the St Galler Festspiele (St Gallen Festival) in Switzerland. This year, sound engineer and audio consultant Dani Niedermann specified a Stagetracker FX real-time performer tracking system from TTA for the performance.
The stage at St Gallen measured 35m wide by 15m and was completely asymmetric,
incorporating several different levels and gradients. “We had an audience capacity of 1,200 people so it was appreciable to have the extra precision afforded to us by the TTA system,” said Niedermann. n www.tta-sound.com