The recent edition of Tom Kerridge’s Pub in the Park festival in Marlow, England, a four-day community event complete with stages, pop-ups and a line-up of chefs mingling with the DJs and artists of the caliber of Van Morrison, Paloma Faith, Busted and Example, saw the main stage outfitted by SWG Events with a sound reinforcement system headed by Martin Audio Wavefront Precision arrays and supporting components.
Bristol-based SWG Events has a long history with the event, this year bringing its flagship WPL line array to festival. The rental company will also be providing sound reinforcement for the other three Pub in the Park events, in Chiswick, St Albans and Reigate.
In Marlow, the production provider populated the stage with hangs of 10 WPL enclosures a side, with four of the smaller Wavefront Precision WPS arrays providing fills across the front of the stage and the sound of 12 of Martin Audio’s older WS218X subwoofers in a broadside array. This was all powered by Martin Audio iKON iK42 process controlled amplifiers in two-box resolution.
“It was the first time I’d used these subs in conjunction with WPL, and they sounded extremely good,” states head of audio Simon Purse. Additional SX218s were used as drum fills onstage, along with Martin Audio LE12Js for artist monitoring.
Although the site itself was situated far from local housing where residents might be inconvenienced, the SWG Events team — under production manager Joe Bailey — worked closely with consultants F1 Acoustics. “We did propagation tests,” Purse notes. “F1 gave us our off-site noise limits which we were comfortably able to stick to, while still achieving good level.”
System tech Sam Jones programmed a “Hard Avoid” setting at the rear of the audience area as a further precaution while SWG Events set the PA as high as possible in order to achieve a good down angle, according to Purse. The audio crew also included patch engineers James Marsh and Ieuan Fishburn as well as monitor tech Fraser Wilks.
“All in all we took a very common-sense design approach, to this event, which really paid off,” Purse concludes.
