Taste of Chaos, Knotfest, It’s Not Dead, and FYF all had something in common this
year – all of these festivals utilized an EAW Anya sound reinforcement system
provided by Camarillo, California-based Rat Sound Systems.
Providing sound reinforcement in a festival environment requires a detailed
understanding of the festival site, location of stages, area noise laws and the
expectations of the promoter. To truly optimize results additionally requires specific
information about the exact size and shape of the audience for each stage, the
weather conditions and the potential presence of residential noise complaints – and
all three of these final elements change repeatedly throughout the course of a
festival.
For Rat Sound, the ability to respond in real-time to the changing demands of
festivals has become a big part of the national sound company’s live sound
business. Their 48 module Anya inventory provides their technical team with the
only loudspeaker tool in the industry that allows them to instantly accommodate the
non-stop demands of their expanding roster of festival clients as situations change.
“There are many factors that we use to determine the optimal system to use for
events. It involves balancing artist demands, coverage requirements and maximum
volume levels amongst other things,’ explains Dave Rat, president of Rat Sound.
“The Anya system’s coverage control is very useful in optimizing the sound for
various venue types while minimizing offsite noise levels.’
Festivals often take place in locations where sound needs to be confined to a very
specific area. This may be driven by the need to minimize bleed between stages or
to keep the neighbours happy. Anya is designed to provide tremendous fidelity and
consistency over a very well defined and controlled coverage area. And if the
situation calls for a change to accommodate a smaller or larger crowd on a primary
or secondary stage or to react to a noise complaint, targeted coverage
modifications can be handled quickly and easily using software alone.
Each Anya module in Rat Sound’s inventory contains 22 highly customized
transducers that are powered and processed independently to provide tremendous
fidelity and control. Engineers use EAW’s Resolution™ software to tell the system
about the venue and the coverage required. Resolution determines the optimal
wave front shape and processing required to achieve those goals while maximizing
sound quality at every audience position. This also allows them to change the
coverage to match a new set of requirements in minutes, using only a mouse.
The design of Anya ensures consistent response throughout any venue as defined by
the end-user. Fourteen HF compression drivers provide a continuous line of
apertures on a horn that expands to fill the entire face of the enclosure. Six 5-inch
MF cone transducers combine with Radial Phase Plug™ and Concentric Summation
Array™ technology to sum coherently with the HF wavefront, and dual 15-inch LF
cone transducers employ Offset Aperture™ loading to extend horizontal pattern
control well into the lower octaves. The engineers at EAW have designed Anya to
direct outstanding and consistent audio fidelity precisely where the user needs it in
all three dimensions – and nowhere else.