SFF2011 was a huge success on all fronts not least the main Dance Arena. After the success of 2010 we were asked to return this year to undertake the full production of the dance arena.

The arena played host to some huge names including Kissy Sellout, Jaguar Skills and Hospitality legends Nutone & Logistics.

From the outset we worked closely with the events management team to give them exactly what they wanted from the arena.

One of the primary design goals for the arena was to maximise noise levels for the audience whilst minimising off-site noise spill. To achieve this goal we turned to a technology that we have been investigating for several years. The technology is called Ambisonics and is primarily a spatial sound recording and reproduction system. The system is very flexible by design and allows a complete 3 dimensional sound field to be replayed over a varying number of loudspeakers. The system is in this respect completely different from discrete surround sound systems like the ITU 5.1 system. The fact that the individual speakers integrate with each other to create a complete sound field makes it well suited for audio playback “in-the-round”.

The ambisonic encoding and decoding process allowed opportunity to facilitate many sound sources all around the outside of the arena. This step away from convention gave us three fantasic benefits. Firstly the sound was focused towards the centre of the arena, secondly it meant that rather than requiring a source to cover a distance of 30m each speaker was only required to cover a maximum distance of around 8m thus reducing the overall sound level from each source. Lastly the layout of the system allowed us to implement bass cancellation techniques around the entire of the perimeter of the arena essentially focusing the entire frequency spectrum within the arena.

The results were fantastic and out stripped our expectations of what the system could achieve. During noise propagation tests for the festival we were informed by the Environmental Health Officer that the dance arena was not contributing to the offsite noise levels at all! Truly a merit to the hard work and planning that had gone into the project.

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Predicted coverage at 4KHz (left) and 16KHz (right).

   

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Predicted low frequency propagation on a 300m grid without low frequency cancellation (left) and with (right). Although the levels away from the arena are similar the levels within the arena are considerably higher with the bass cancellation

The front of house system consisted of 8 Funktion-One Resolution 4s and 16 F218s, all amplification and processing consisted of MC2 and XTA respectively with main control being provided by the ground breaking Allen & Heath iLive T112.

The lighting was also designed to create an encompassing atmosphere with state-of-the-art lighting fixtures located around the outside of the arena. The lighting rig consisted of 10 MAC250 Entours , 6 MAC250 Beams a number of pars, strobes, UV canons and 50+ LED battens throughout the arena with control provided by the Avolites Pearl Expert and Expert Touch Wing to facilitate rapid programing on the fly.

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We also undertook sound reinforcement for a second stage which was built on a boat! On the Saturday we scheduled an eclectic mix of genres from across the board and on the sunday the boat was taken over by the Toolroom Records DJs.