Adlib Audio's high profile festival season continued apace at Reading & Leeds, where they once again supplied full audio production - including over 90 JBL VerTec 4889 elements - and crew for the Radio 1/NME stage at the 2009 Reading/Leeds Festival. Identical systems were supplied to both Reading and Leeds sites. Adlib's crew chief for Leeds was Marc Peers, with James Neale looking after Reading, while Dave Jones co-ordinated both sites from the office in Liverpool.
This year - because of the huge popularity of the bands appearing at peak times including Florence & The Machine, Gossip, Faith No More, Lost Prophets and many more - there was the additional challenge of providing PAs for 3 IMAG video screens positioned outside both sides and at the rear of the tent. These enabled anyone not actually able to squeeze inside to see & hear the action and still enjoy the shows. These speakers also all had to be integrated into the main systems.
The main hangs inside were 10 VerTec VT4889s per side with 16 ground stacked VerTec 4880A subs. There were also two delay hangs of 3 VT4889s a side flown between the rear tent king poles with 4 stacks of L-Acoustics dv-DOSC for front infills and outfills.
Midas H3000 consoles were supplied for FOH, with Dolby Lake processing, dbx 160 compressors, Lexicon reverbs, Drawmer gates and a special rack of extras including Avalon valve compressors.
Onstage, monitor world was run via Yamaha PM5D consoles, with 20 Adlib MP3 wedges per stage, dv-SUBS for the drums and Nexo Alpha side fills. Adlib also supplied a full package of mics and stands to cover all eventualities. It was a flip-flop situation with the same line up alternating between sites, so the monitor show files for days 2 and 3 were emailed between the sites. When engineers arrived to mix their bands the next day, all their settings were pre-loaded and efficiently in place.
The PAs for the screens were ground stacked on 12 ft high platforms. The arrays were assembled on the ground on a fly bar and lifted into position by a tele-handler. The tent left and right screens featured 6 VT4889s per side, with 4 per side for the centre screen at the back of the tent.
Camco amps were used to drive all the VerTec high packs, with Labgruppen PLM14000s for the subs, PLM10000s for the monitors, and L-Acoustics LA8s powering the dv-DOSCs.
Marc Peers was also working as patch-master at Leeds, the rest of his team consisting of Richie Gibson (FOH/systems), Richy Nicholson (monitors/system), Michael Flaherty & Steve "Pato" Pattison (stage), with Jamie Moore taking care of the outside systems.
In Reading, joining James Neale were Hassane Es Siahi (FOH), Ben Booker (monitors), Ralph Jayne & Carlos Herreros (stage) with Simon Fuller working on the exterior elements. Due to the intensity of the schedule, the crew were all accommodated on site in crew buses.
Says Dave Jones, "It was great to be back working on this stage again, and having completed a run of leading events this year including T in the Park, Glastonbury, Latitude and V, we very much have a fluid festival workflow on the go".
The bank holiday weekend didn't stop at Leeds/Reading for Adlib, they also supplied sound systems and crew for 6 inner city stages at the core of Liverpool's Matthew Street Festival.