Feature: Alive and kicking

October to December are traditionally peak months for outdoor music festivals in Thailand, and the country’s handling of the pandemic and consequent controlling of infection rates meant that many events were able to go ahead in the latter part of 2020, subject to satisfactory risk assessments. Numerous festivals were rolled out across the country’s islands, beaches and mountainsides as Thai residents enjoyed what most of the world could only dream of.

This included the CAT Expo musical gathering, which not only took place during 2020 but was also the biggest yet in the event’s seven-year history. More than 60,000 people attended the two-day expo featuring five stages of alternative music including new and upcoming artists, plus stalls manned by independent record labels selling merchandise and scouting for talent, food and beverage outlets and meeting areas. Organised by CAT Radio in Bangkok, the 2020 event returned to an abandoned amusement park, the Siam Wonder World Extreme Park, north-east of the Thai capital. Part of the reason for returning here was that the spacious venue allowed a large audience to attend without crowding, providing a good internal flow between the stages. This helped with social distancing measures which, together with mask-wearing and hygienic practices, ensured the festival could proceed in a safe manner.

The main stage featured the first Adamson E15 three-way line source system to arrive in Thailand, supplied to rental company Live4 Viva by Adamson’s Thai distributor, Sonos Libra. Live4 Viva has been providing a complete AV and lighting system for the main stage at CAT Expo for several years, and this was the second time that Sonos Libra worked with the rental company on the festival, having supported the use of an Adamson S10 system in 2019. “We provided sales, import, technical and engineering support, including training for first time use of the system,” explains Sonos Libra chief, Alfonso Martin.

The companies were planning to carry out some training on the new E15 system prior to the festival, but a delay in shipment meant it needed to go to the festival almost directly from the airport. “The shipment arrived from Toronto through Taipei and then to Bangkok, and things got stuck in Taipei because logistics were giving priority to food and medical supplies, and because there weren’t many commercial flights, space was limited,” recalls Martin. “It arrived in bits and pieces and we couldn’t clear customs until we had the whole lot, but we made it in time for CAT Expo.”

This was fortunate as Live4 Viva needed to deploy the complete system for the festival, supplementing it with Adamson components it already owned. “I’ve known Live4 Viva for many years; they were one of the first companies I talked to when I arrived in Thailand,” continues Martin, who hails from Spain, initially joining audio distributor One Systems Global in 2013 before starting his own company four years later. “They bought an S10 line array system three years ago, becoming the first official Adamson users in Thailand, and they’ve been upgrading slowly. They were dry hiring additional equipment from other rental companies as needed, and so it eventually made sense to purchase their own. Happily, they decided to stick with Adamson.”

“We’ve been looking to expand our audio capabilities progressively each year,” explains Live4Viva general manager, Mr Vitoo. “Since we stepped up to Adamson S10 we knew we were playing in a different league and that’s motivated us to think about the next step. 2020 has presented a lot of challenges but also some good opportunities. Sonos Libra and Adamson gave us several good reasons to move to the E series and we decided to do so.”

The main stage at CAT Expo hosted some of the most popular artists to play the festival over the two days, accommodating 15-20,000 people at peak capacity. The 22m-wide stage, together with a FOH position at 60m, were two of the audio team’s main challenges when it came to guaranteeing audio uniformity and consistent coverage for the target audience area of 90m deep and 50m wide. “We were lucky to have enough trimming height for the system and a proper rigging infrastructure,” says Martin, whose engineering team assisted the Live4 Viva technical staff to rig the new system safely and correctly. “There were some challenges that needed our initial input. Some of the positioning and physical layouts for FOH and stage were not satisfactory and we had to push to get a compromise. We wanted to ensure the correct sonic fingerprint of the E15 as there was a lot of anticipation about hearing it for the first time in Thailand.

“With the FOH at 60m, a bit further than the usual location, we ran the risk of not having enough SPL for certain frequency ranges there, but the Adamson E15 system with E219 subs blew us away: 60m became 30m, but if you walked to the actual 30m position, the SPL variance was minimal. Everyone, including FOH engineers for the bands, organisers and technicians, pointed out how uniform and consistent the system was over the distances and how present it was at FOH despite the length.”

The main PA consisted of 12 Adamson E15 line array elements with two Adamson S10s line array flown beneath as down-fills. The front-fill system consists of a further eight Adamson S10s split into four stacks of two each, to cover the near centre stage and act as out-fills. Twelve Adamson E219 and eight E119 subwoofers, developed to boost the low end of the E Series, were configured in a central line array arc configuration.

The entire system was powered by 17 Lab.Gruppen PLM 20K44 SP amps, mounted in five Adamson E-Rack turnkey packages using Lake digital signal processing and audio networking to control the system. Signal distribution was via Dante, with AES and analogue automatic fallback ensuring redundancy.

At front of house, two Allen & Heath dLive S5000 consoles connected in dual surface configuration to a DM64 MixRack fitted with Dante card and DX32 modular expander with Prime 32-bit input/output modules was on mixing duties. Live4 Viva was one of the first Thai clients to buy the dLive from Martin at One Systems Global, and the rental company continues to upgrade the system with new accessories.

Sonos Libra’s system engineering setup consisted of two Apple Mac Minis, two Dell touchscreens, a Xilica Solaro FR1 DSP core, a MIPro ACT-848 Dante-enabled quad-channel UHF digital receiver with four TA-80 digital wireless transmitters, four Isemcon EMX-7150 measurement mics, Smaart V8 audio analysis software and Lake Controller software.

With Thailand’s foreign tourism industry shut down due to the pandemic, which has also prevented its own population from travelling abroad, domestic events such as CAT Expo are important for the country’s economy, not to mention morale. “Some live events and festivals do attract an international crowd, but CAT Expo is predominantly a Thai festival,” says Martin. “It has a well-defined audience profile, as CAT Radio is a new wave, indie station that actively promotes local talent, so you see bands scaling up throughout the festival, starting on stage five and progressing over time to the main stage.”

The use of the E15 system raised the audio quality and atmosphere of the main stage to new heights, according to feedback received after the event. “Several audience members remarked how clear the sound was, and how easily they could understand the lyrics, as well as the amount of punch and impact the sound had across the audience area,” says Martin. “Human beings are highly influenced by the sense of hearing and this is something that, although they might not know, they certainly felt.”

To work on a large-scale event like CAT Expo during 2020, with the added bonus of deploying a brand new large-format system for the first time, placed Sonos Libra and Live4Viva in a unique position. “We felt really privileged and happy to be here, seeing the scene recovering slowly and things starting to move again, especially given the concurrent situation in other countries,” concluded Martin shortly after the event. “My dream has always been to put a big PA system in Thailand. There’s a lot of PA here already, so I’m proud that we did this with our own company and the brand we’ve chosen to represent. We’ve already placed large Adamson systems with our subsidiaries in Vietnam and Myanmar, but I’m based here, and I wanted my customers to experience a system like this. It’s all about seeing the industry progress and develop. We’d been working towards this for a year and a half, and it just happened to come together during these strange times we’ve been living through.”

This feature appears in the March– April edition of Pro AVL Asia. Subscribe at www.proavl-central.com/subscribe/asia