GOODLIFE FESTIVAL SCALES UP TO MARTIN AUDIO WPL SYSTEM WITH DBS SOLUTIONS
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 metres, 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 TORUST1230 outfills covered the sides, while Martin Audio FP12s sat on top of the castle-wall sub-array as front-fills.
The scalability of the system is brilliant and it always sounds amazing.”
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 optimising 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. “The noise management team would come back and forth to check on other tents, and if we were approaching the limit, we’d back it down a decibel or two. We would check in before the headliners went on to see what headroom we had left before hitting any off-site noise. While we didn't have a lot left to give in terms of off-site noise limits, there was tons of headroom in the PA itself. Giving them that extra decibel or two really livened it up and they were very pleased with the sound of the system.”
This year dBS Solutions is celebrating its 20th anniversary in business. Asked about his highlights, Bogg is quick to respond: “The people we get to work with make this a really nice way to make a living – the many incredible artists over the years, and the freelancers, contractors, and site teams we get to collaborate with. We are entirely about our team and working collaboratively with others.”
That collaborative approach extends directly to the company’s long-standing partnership with Martin Audio. “Our journey with Martin Audio has progressed from smaller boxes like WPM and WPS to WPC and WPL, allowing us to scale up to these large-scale festivals,” Chris explains. “What really sealed it for us when we bought our first optimisable array was the scalable resolution. With Martin, you can step toward it. As a rental company, that means I can own a pool of amplifiers and deploy them at one-box resolution on a high-stakes gig where we need absolute off-site noise control, or run them at two-box resolution for a standard gig and use the remaining amplifier channels to run a second system on another site. The scalability of the system is brilliant and it always sounds amazing.”
Photos: nckpix / dBS Solutions / Good Life Festival