After a fallow year, Glastonbury is back on top form and both MC2 and XTA played their part in making it the biggest and best yet. With XTA headlining on the Pyramid stage for the Rolling stones (more on that here) there were a multitude of stages and tents in the Silver Hayes dance area being powered by MC2 amplifiers and XTA processing.
The main dance tent – Sonic – was kitted out by the specialist team at Audio Plus, using a total of 56 channels of E100 amplification (a total available power of 140kW!) all kept under strict control by six dedicated XTA DP448 processors.
This amazing system posed some interesting challenges due to the unique layout – a three pronged structure with the stage area being central made providing even coverage quite a tricky problem to resolve. Resolution was the answer, though – quite literally! Funktion one stepped up to the plate with a carefully designed system consisting of multiple groups of Res5 speakers, with accompanying sub enclosures and Res4 systems for monitoring.
Arcadia was an altogether different dance music experience, consisting of a giant spider structure that really came into its own after dark, with lighting, pyrotechnics and laser shows designed to take revellers to another plane as they danced the night away beneath the huge metallic arthropod.
Audio Funktion took care of the sound duties for this beast, powering it up with MC2 E100 amp racks controlled by DP448s, for the outer reaches of the “legs” and inner fills using a mixture of E15, E25, and E45 amplifiers, all with DP448 management, and all running under AudioCore for centralised control.
For the more underground DJ scene, visitors needed to dig no further than the WOW tent. By the very nature of being less mainstream, the system requirements were less ambitious in scope, but the requirements for top quality sound were just the same. XTA processing and MC2 E Series amplifiers ensured that whether it was the outdoor daytime performances (on the good ship “WOW”!), or the night time shows “under canvas”, the WOW tent would justify its name!
