Adamson E15 system powers Defqon.1 dance festival

Sydney International Regatta Centre recently played host to Defqon.1, one of the most successful outdoor dance party events of its kind, with help from loudspeaker maker Adamson.

The outdoor festival attracted 22,000 people and featured seven stages, with Norwest Productions providing complete sound production. Staging, lighting, and pyrotechnics were executed by LX- PRG, Lasers- Oracle, and Pyro-Howard & Sons.

The audio system design was executed by FOH engineer Scott Harrison on the new Adamson Blueprint AV Software, allowing the plotting of four hangs, plus a front fill. "The prediction really matched well what we experienced on the day, and it was great being able to plot all four hangs at once, giving us a great idea of our coverage and our expected SPL," said Harrison.

The main E15 hangs per side were made up of 16 boxes in each; outer hangs had ten Y18 boxes and the subwoofer extension was provided by three clusters of eight T21 subs arrayed in a two-high, four-wide configuration at each location. The front fill featured three stacks of three Y10’s, and for DJ monitors, EAW’s SB730 with KF730 subs were used.

"With an area of 80m (260ft) wide x 100m (330ft) long to cover, including a VIP viewing deck at the 100m mark, we needed something that was going to have the ability to make it all the way to the back, without sacrificing clarity and SPL. We have used the Y18 in previous years, so we knew an Adamson solution was going to do the job. From all reports about the Energia system, I was very excited to get hangs of 16 boxes out – and give its legs a stretch," commented Harrison.

"It was the first time I’ve flown the E15, and after getting back from lunch, we decided to hit the two main clusters. It was system tech Jonathon Warren and I, and we had a 16-box hang flown to trim in 25 minutes; and most of that time was spent getting the boxes into place inside the scaffold towers. The E15 is easily the fastest and easiest rigging system I’ve seen."

All processing was provided by the Lake LM Series, Lab.Gruppen delivering the amplification, totalling four racks of 6x FP6400 for the subs, eight racks of 4x FP6400 and 2x 10000Q for all the Adamson tops, and 2x PLM10000Qs took care of the DJ monitors. For the FOH missing console, a DiGiCo SD8 was chosen for its Optocore link.

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