Goodlife Festival at Harewood House in Leeds built on the sell-out success of its inaugural event last year, returning on Saturday 6 June with an increased capacity to welcome up to 10,000 festival-goers. With a stellar main stage line-up including Armand Van Helden, Groove Armada, Alison Limerick, Roger Sanchez, and Inner City, event production specialist dBS Solutions provided a sound system to match the expanded festival scale with the deployment of a flagship Martin Audio WPL line array system.
Initially slated for a WPC system, the rapid growth in ticket sales prompted dBS Solutions to upgrade the system design. dBS Solutions Director, Chris Bogg, explains: “We won the tender on WPC, but when ticket sales for Leeds started rising and the capacity increased, we re-examined the site. Martin Audio’s DISPLAY software was a fantastic tool because it allowed me to show the client, ‘Look, you’ve opened up this audience area. If you want it to sound consistent, we’re going to need a delay tower, and we might need to look at making the main hang WPL instead of WPC.’ It was an incredibly helpful tool for guiding them through those choices.” With an audience area approaching 100 meters, the final system comprised front hangs of 10 x Martin Audio WPL array elements per side, paired with a castle-wall cardioid sub-array of 14 x SXH218 subs.
To ensure seamless coverage to the back of the site, a single delay tower of 6 x Martin Audio WPC array elements was deployed, including a cardioid-configured stack of 3 x SXH subs. Ground-stacked Martin Audio TORUS T1230 outfills covered the sides, while Martin Audio FP12s sat on top of the castle-wall sub-array as front-fills. On stage, a high-performance monitoring package featured Martin Audio XE300 wedges, with DJ-fills consisting of two SXC subs with an FP15 FlexPoint Series cabinet on each side of the performer.
“We got great coverage from the system and plenty of sub,” confirms Chris, and praises the accuracy of Martin Audio’s DISPLAY software in designing and optimizing the system: “What we really like about the Martin Audio software is that it is super accurate. What you are looking at on screen is genuinely what you get on-site.” Managing noise limits across the site required close cooperation, with Chris describing a highly collaborative approach between artists, engineers, and the on-site noise management team throughout the event.
For more information, visit martin-audio.com.
