Trondheim, Norway (September 28, 2018)—Northern European audiences have always had a taste for the heavy stuff when it comes to music, so it’s little surprise that this summer saw Norway field a new festival—Trondheim Rocks, headlined by Iron Maiden and Volbeat. Because hard rock and hooch go so well together, the production was held on the grounds of the city’s Dahl brewery as audio provider Trondheim Lyd covered 19,000 fans with a sizable Alcons Audio LR28 PA.
The event featured two stages, a large main stage and a secondary, smaller one to the left, with an audience arena around 109 meters deep. The main stage system had main hangs of 20 Alcons LR28 larger format line array modules each, with 32 BC543 cardioid subwoofers and 39 LR18 compact mid-sized line array modules for inner, outer and side fills. A half-dozen VR12 mid-sized monitors were used for front fill (with an additional four RR12 point source array modules for vocal frontfills for Iron Maiden only). Pairs of VR8 compact versatile monitors and BF151 compact subwoofers provided nearfills for the FOH mix position.
The secondary stage featured main hangs of eight LR28 each, 12 BC543 subs and six LR18 for frontfill. The systems used 69 Sentinel10 and one Sentinel3 amplified loudspeaker controllers, totalling 280 channels of processed amplification.
The lack of delays meant bigger main hangs, which added potential issues of spill (the nearest residential property was just 20 meters from the main stage) and wind interference, but it proved to not be an issue.
“We had no problems in complying with the FoH dB limit of 100 dBA Leq 15min,” said Trondheim Lyd audio technician Arnstein Fossvik. “On both stages, we had horizontal arrays of subwoofers and, with the BC543 being a self-contained cardioid sub, there was minimal leakage outside the audience area. Thomas Denstad of dB Control Norway did measurements in and outside the festival area and expected it to heavily exceed the strict city dBA- and dBC Leq30 limits. In fact it only exceeded them by a few dBs and there were no complaints at all from residents. On both evenings there was quite a strong breeze, but the pro-ribbon drivers really pushed the high frequencies through it.”
This was also noted by Paul Higgins, system tech for Volbeat FOH engineer Mads Mikkelsen, who says, “Both Mads and I were thoroughly impressed by the pro-ribbon drivers performance in a crosswind, as well as the enclosure flat response in both magnitude and phase. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the product, and look forward to using it again in the future.”
Trondheim Lyd • www.trondheimlyd.no
Trondheim Rocks • www.trondheimrocks.no
Alcons Audio • www.alconsaudio.com
