MLA DELIVERS A VERY COOL BRITANNIA
Capital’s advanced sound reinforcement brings the best out of Knebworth.
This year’s Cool Britannia at Knebworth Park built on the success of last year’s inaugural event, and now looks to have become a consolidated festival.
With the event tagged “iconic acts inspired by an epic era”, Capital Sound were again brought in to work alongside production manager Keith Morris, with whom they have historically partnered on the Rewind festivals—and as was the case last year they equipped both the Main and Ministry of Sound stages.
Both presented star-studded line-ups with James, Embrace, Sleeper, Basement Jaxx, The Coral, Starsailor, Fun Loving Criminals dominating the main stage and Danny Rampling, Seb Fontaine, Goldie, Norman Jay, Phil Hartnoll and Graeme Park the MOS Stage.
As ever Capital Sound provided a faultless service and excellent sound, with Martin Audio’s MLA, for both the Main Stage and the Ministry Of Sound Big Top.
Capital Sound’s Robin Conway noted that “the biggest upgrade this year was that we were able to fly the MLA side hang stage right, thanks to the redesigned structures, whereas it was ground stacked last year. This not only freed up some much-needed space, but provided a superior, more even coverage.”
He continued, “As production were happy with what we had done in 2018 there was no real need to tweak anything other than that.”
The main stage PA comprised 15 MLA and a single MLD Downfill per side, with 14 x MLX in broadside cardioid array providing LF extension. A further 10 W8LM Mini Line Array elements were placed in pairs on top of the subs as lip fills.
For the MOS dance stage, which ran later into the night, strict sound limits needed to be observed. “But we were able to run at 98dB(A) average and 101dB(A) peak,” Conway confirmed.
To achieve this they ground stacked five MLA Compact elements per side side, with 15 Martin Audio SX218 placed in five stacks of three across the front, with four Martin Audio XD12 on stands. Artists requiring monitoring were serviced by six Martin Audio LE1500 among the battery of stage wedges.
Capital’s team on duty included crew boss and monitor engineer, Jonny Buck, Ben Turnbull (system tech), Dan Leaver (FOH engineer), Antony Best (monitor engineer) and Isabella Di Biase and Bheki Phakathi (Patch)—all on Main Stage—while Alex Legge and Alastair Hellard supervised the sound on the MOS Stage.
Summarising the event, Conway said, “Everything went to plan and production were extremely happy with the result.”
This was backed up by Keith Morris: “As ever Capital Sound provided a faultless service and excellent sound, with Martin Audio’s MLA, for both the Main Stage and the Ministry Of Sound Big Top. The changeovers ran like clockwork due to their very experienced crew—a great job all round.”