Spartan Audio has supplied a Void Acoustics touring PA system for a series of live artists and EDM events at Cardiff’s Splott Warehouse.

Following the success of the Color Festival in June, the venue once again swapped market stalls for live music recently as it welcomed electronic duo Chase and Status and a crowd of around 4,000.

An audio production services company staffed entirely by former sound engineers, South Wales-based Spartan provided a Void system consisting of flown Arcline 6 line arrays and Stasys XV2 subwoofers.

“From our considerable experience with Void systems we know that Arcline really delivers in terms of sonic quality, particularly for EDM events like these,” said Spartan’s financial director Thomas Viney. “It’s a reliable and well thought out design – small, transportable, and powerful.”

In total, eight Arcline 6 boxes were flown per side, with eight ground stacked Stasys XV2 subwoofers run mostly as a mono sub-bass block. These were supplemented by Nexus 6 infills. Air Motions and Arcline X DJ monitors, as well as Impluse 4t floor wedges, made up the monitoring system. The PA was powered by Lab.gruppen PLM series, Powersoft, and Crown amplifiers, and processed by Void Acoustics Livedrives.

During the week, the Splott Market is held at the same location right up to 1pm on event day – and then it is totally transformed.

“Doors are open at 2pm on the Saturday, so we have to make a lightning quick turnaround of the site to accommodate punters,” explained Viney. “There’s a market on the following morning at the usual time, so all the kit has to be de-rigged and offsite by 4am latest.

“We have to take into consideration that this a residential area, and we specified the system with that in mind although we had plenty in the tank. At front of house we peaked at ‘A’ weighted 110dB at 25 metres from the PA and for most of the day we were running at 98db to 105dB to keep within the environmental constraints. There are also residents living fairly close to the rear of stage location, and so we added some delays into certain subs and altered their placement, resulting in some back cancellation and keeping the perimeter below a very acceptable 70db. Although we had a few calls at the earlier Colorfest event in June, this time – nothing."

Viney is confident that the audio formula is right and that Spartan will be repeating several events of this nature next year. “Although we’re only in our sixth year of trading we have consistently reinvested in bigger and better loudspeaker products,” he says. “Having given some of the better-known brands a try we wanted to consolidate on one manufacturer, and after careful research we found the Void Acoustics brand and haven’t looked back."

Photo credit: Jon Plimmer.

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