L-Acoustics in Control at Primavera Festival

	Wind Atlas with L-Acoustics KARA on the Pitchfork Stage. Photo: Louis Austin

Noted for its eclectic line-up, Primavera is an annual music festival that takes place in the Parc del Fòrum leisure site in Barcelona, close to the Balearic coastline. One of the largest music festivals in Spain, Primavera audiences are regularly in excess of 100,000 and the atmosphere is always second to none.

This year, long-time Primavera audio provider Twin Cam Audio specified L-Acoustics for five of the festival's seven stages. Right from the beginning, Twin Cam's technical director, Juan Cid, worked hand in hand with L-Acoustics touring application engineer Frédéric Bailly to jointly design all five stages.

Twin Cam chose Primavera to debut their newly acquired compact and lightweight K2 audio system. The company says the K1 along with K2 provided the one-two audio punch enabling them to offer a more powerful, accurate, and versatile system than ever before. The core main stage setup (Sony Stage) was flown with left/right arrays of 12 K1 and four K1-SB per side. Two hangs of six K1, two K1-SB, and three KARA provided outfill, with ten KARA for frontfill, while K2 was used for L/R delays and 22 SB28s provided low end reinforcement. Four ARCS II with a pair of SB28 subs were used for stage sidefill. The entire system was powered using LA8 amplifiers.

Rafael Campos, director and owner of Twin Cam, was amazed at how K2 improved sound performance and setup. "It delivers an identical sonic performance to K1 in a more compact footprint. K2 is lightweight, so it's very quick and easy to get onstage and ready to go," he insists. "Primavera imposes a strict limit of 102dB at front-of-house, so our big challenge is to maximize those dBs at every point where there are spectators. K1 and K2 together allow us to cover the festival with the most homogenous response possible and so we get to deliver superb audio to festivalgoers, while keeping the neighbors happy."

For the ATP Stage (second stage), two hangs of 14 K2 were deployed per side, complemented by six K1-SB with KUDO for outfills and delays. Additional stages (Vice and Pitchfork) used two complete KARA systems, and the Heineken Hidden stage boasted an ARCS Wide and Focus system.

"The systems are designed, weighing every detail, to cover crowd areas like a glove," Campos continued. "Before the show, we used L-Acoustics Soundvision to predict how sound would feel in all corners of each of the five stages, allowing us to get optimal performance out of all our rigs."

The pressure of doing audio at a big, first-rate festival with multiple stages is especially felt at the production level. "The magnitude of the transportation, the crew, and the schedules is multiplied by five here. That translates into extra stress at our end," Campos reflects. "Because K2 offers almost the same sonic signature as the K1, but with less size and weight, we are able to assure that we get those stages up and running in less time. It's been a real revelation for our crew."

But in the end, it's the quality and power of the sound that matters for festivalgoers. "Audiences demand more immersion and more dynamic performances which means the proportion of subs has constantly grown over the years," Campos adds. "We can deliver that with this new L-Acoustics system. It allows us to get quality sound right in their faces -- even at the distances we are dealing with! The power and clarity are just phenomenal!"

"The festival organizers have to have confidence in us, and in the product. I'm proud to say that this year, we received the highest praise ever. The K1/K2 punch was unstoppable, and we were in a different league than the other stages -- an opinion shared by all -- organizers and audiences. The only question that remains from this year's Primavera is how to better it next year!"

For more details on Primavera, www.primaverasound.es/?lang=en. Twin Cam Audio Performance S.L can be found online at www.twincamaudio.com.