The Peter Gabriel-founded festival explores world music with long-standing audio vendor, Britannia Row Productions, across four stages
Britannia Row Productions has supplied L-Acoustics PA systems across four of WOMAD’s stages: Open Air, Saddlespan, Siam and Taste the World, on behalf of Judgeday Productions Director, Dave T.
The Open Air Stage is the second festival environment in which Britannia Row has deployed the new L Series L2 system, following exceptional results at Soho House Festival.
System Engineer Sergiy Zhytnikov worked across the Open Air Stage. It boasted main hangs of L2, K2 stacked on the platform for side coverage, KS28 subs in a cardioid configuration across the stage, andA15’s for front fill.
He comments”: “As WOMAD is a world musicfestival, artists perform a variety of different genres including indie rock,nu jazz and downtempo, Indian funk and so on. Both the guest engineers and theproduction team were very happy with the L2’s results over the weekend, fromconsistency in system coverage to good SPL across the field.”
This is clarified by FOH Engineer Artur David,who was mixing renowned Portuguese fado singer Mariza. He says: “The L2 soundedwell balanced. I was happy that with our acoustic set and a little soundpressure, the low end stayed clean and focused. Props to the system tech!”
Zhytnikov continues: “We should note that theweather conditions were very challenging at WOMAD this year; we were dealingwith sunshine and 50% humidity, to rain and up to 80% humidity, often with thestrong winds. Yet the L2 handles strong winds very well. I had to usetemperature and humidity sensors during the day to fight this rapid change inweather conditions and update system filters accordingly, as the humidity andtemperature dramatically affects sound propagation through the air. In myopinion, it offers more stability than any other line array. ”
Britannia Row Crew Chief Fergus Mount adds:“Flying this PA is very quick as you only need to fly minimal boxes per sideand you don't have angles to put in between the boxes. Noise monitoring atWOMAD is strict, and the off-site noise readings were constantly beingmonitored. With the extra control of so many drivers in a single box and itscardioid low end, Sergiy is able to be surgically precise about where the soundstarts and stops. Even during headline acts, the offsite noise was barelyregistering.
“As an engineer myself, I thought it had a greatpresence and closeness at FOH. I noted it has a well-rounded Hifi tonality, andthe low end is something else… The Britannia Row sound design was perfectlycomplemented by the ground stacked KS28 subs on stage.”
