BMI Stage at Lollapalooza Uses Martin Audio Fixtures

Technotrix supplied the audio for the BMI stage at music festival Lollapalooza, featuring a PA system that included Martin Audio Wavefront Precision Compact (WPC) arrays and MLX subs. They also supplied Wavefront Precision Mini (WPM) arrays for the Kidzapalooza stage that showcased children’s singers for the younger crowd.

Describing the situation at BMI, Technotrix audio manager Brent Bernhardt explains, “this stage always has the newly signed recording artists who’ll end up being featured on the main stage a year or two down the road. The system included seven Martin Audio WPC a side flown on an SL100 mobile stage. We had nine MLX subs in blocks of three, cardioid. Two stacks of two WPM for front fills were on the stage with a WS218X and one W8C’s for side fills. For monitoring, there were 12 XE300 wedges and one SX218 sub as a drum/DJ fill.

“The challenge was the artists’ needs typically exceeded the available space,” he added. “We had to put a main stage worth of gear on a mobile stage because all of these bands are at the breakout point where they could fill a 5,000-capacity facility on their own tour, which meant a lot of equipment on this tiny little stage. Fortunately, the coverage and optimizations for WPC were fantastic right out of the gate. We noticed a vast improvement over systems we’d used in the past and the cabinets’ light weight gave us many more options for what we could hang with the limited weight capacity. The MLX’s were incredible as well, we had to turn them down 18dB to match the rest of the system.”

Powering for the mains was provided by four Martin Audio iK42’s, with four iK42’s for the wedge mixes and one for a drum/DJ fill. Bernhardt confirms “we used three box per circuit resolution which provided very consistent coverage. That plus the guest engineers were completely enamored of the fact that the mix translated so well to the center even though we were so far off axis. Everyone was amazed at how quiet the stage was without any of the typical feedback problems they get on mobile stages. Our client, C3 Presents, thought it sounded pretty awesome considering how small the rig was.”