42 l October 2013
www.psneurope.com
livereport GERMANY
Sziget is a roaring success
Sziget isn’t your average festival; this week-long annual spectacle began life 20 years ago as a low-key student affair and is now one of Europe’s largest music events. At the audio helm this year was Meyer Sound’s LEO – and it was quite the talking point, writes Paul Watson
FIRST THINGS first, Sziget is bloody big: 1,000 bands fill 60 stages over seven days, and the daily capacity is a whopping 70,000 people. The site, too, is huge at 266 acres, and unique: Obudai-sziget (Old Buda Island) is a real island situated on the river Danube in the north of the Hungarian capital Budapest. In 2011, Sziget won Best Major European Festival in the European Festivals Awards. The line-up for 2013 included Blur, Franz Ferdinand, Biffy Clyro, and Mika. This year also marked the 10th anniversary of Meyer Sound providing PA equipment to the festival: approximately 400 boxes were deployed over several stages, and LEO made its Sziget debut on the main stage, which has been managed since 2004 by sound designer, Károly Molnár, who says it left a lasting impression. Molany’s company, Animative Ltd, was responsible for production management. “Every year we’ve tried to
improve the system design and we’ve always been supportive of new ideas, so bringing LEO into the fray is a real leap forward; it’s a fantastic system with a huge throw, which means the audience’s experience is better than ever,” he explains. “One of the biggest advantages in using LEO at this festival is that the music styles are so varied, and this system will work with any of them – it’s not just a rock ’n’ roll PA. Every engineer is able to find the tonality they need, and because LEO is so linear with a
Károly Molnár, sound designer
MILOs and 700-HPs. “I’ve rigged many different systems in my time, but what I’ve found when working with LEO is that because two or three people can rig the whole thing, it’s such a quick and easy process,” Szczesny explains. “For me, there are a few key things that a system must have: good motors, good cables, and good power signal – and we have all of that when working with LEO; it’s so important to have good quality coverage at a festival these days, and with LEO I’ve had no problem with wind or any other weather conditions when playing in wide open spaces, so I have no complaints at all.” FOH chief at Sziget is Tamás
Dragon, who has been riding festival faders for some 20 years. The festival game has changed somewhat, he says, much of which is down to the digital evolution and increase in loudspeaker intelligence. “I’ve got to have a knowledge
Tamás Dragon, FOH
flat frequency response, it’s easy to achieve, which means they can spend all their time on the console rather than have to fiddle with system settings.” The LEO system was
provided by Polish rental house GMB Pro Sound, with additional equipment support from UK-based Capital Sound.
The main hang consisted of 16 Meyer Sound LEO boxes each side of the stage
Adam Szczesny of GMB was on-site to oversee the rigging process. Forty-eight LEO-M boxes were deployed in total: two hangs of 16 for the main hang, and an additional 16 for the out-hangs. A sizeable ground-stacked sub system centred around 40 1100-LFC low-frequency, which were
supported by 24 700-HP subwoofers: 18 1100-LFCs were stacked per side in a two-stack, deep end-fired configuration; a line of 12 700-HPs provided centre fill; and six cardioid- configured 700-HPs were positioned underneath each of the two LEO out-hangs. All delay towers were made up of
of all the main digital consoles these days, and the Avid [Venue] and Yamaha [PM5D] desks are really good for festivals; everyone knows them, and if there are any minor issues, which is rare, I’m there to lend a hand,” he says. “The quality of the shows goes up every year, too; 20 years ago, it would be simple rock ’n’ roll with a few guitars being taken on and off
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