ADLIB Sound Out V Festivals

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The Festival season continued at pace for ADLIB Audio, who supplied sound systems for the Arena and Union Stages (stages 3 & 4) at both V festival sites in Stafford and Chelmsford, UK. It was the first time ADLIB has taken care of the Arena Stages which featured a plethora of acts including; Lady Ga Ga, The Saturdays, Lemar and Calvin Harris amongst others.

The systems for both sites were identical in terms of equipment. To deliver consistency and quality throughout its busy festival schedule, ADLIB has evolved a number of standard festival system packages depending on size, space and band/music requirements, designed so each event can run like clockwork.

The Arena

In Stafford this was a Y-shaped tent, and challenging to get coverage in the left and right extremities. The main arrays were 8 flown JBL VerTec 4889 elements per side, with an additional 4 x VT4889s ground stacked and carefully positioned to cover those left and right outer extreme areas. For infill and front fill, a stack of 3 L-Acoustics dvDOSCs were used each side, and the picture was completed with 8 x VerTec VT4880s subs on the ground.

The FOH console was a Midas H3000, with Dolby Lake processing, dbx 160 compressors, Lexicon reverbs, Drawmer gates and a rack of extras including Eventide H3000, TC 2290, Avalon valve compressors and DBX 160S.

Of the 20+ bands appearing over the 2 days at each site only 2 were without FOH engineers, so these were mixed by the ADLIB team, which consisted of (in Stafford) Richie Gibson (FOH/systems), Richy Nicholson (monitors/system), Marc Peers (crew chief and patch master) Michael Flaherty & Walter Jaquiss (stage).

In Chelmsford, the Arena stage crew line up was Dave Kay (FOH/systems), Ben Booker (monitors/system), James Neal (crew chief and patch guru), Carlos Herreros & Hassane Es Siahi (stage).

The monitor systems were 14 ADLIB MP3 low profile wedges and some dvSUBS for the drums, with L-Acoustics ARCs side fills, all running into a Yamaha PM5D console. ADLIB also supplied a festival mics-and-stands package

Union Stage

This Tent also featured a JBL VerTec system, this time ground stacked. A big advantage of this particular line array is that it works very well in this format. The subs were 6 ADLIB DF4s stacked onstage, and the infill and outfill boxes were ADLIB's own FD series.

A Soundcraft Vi6 was the FOH console, with a PM5D onstage, and most of the FOH processing was achieved using the inbuilt Lake units of the Labgruppen PLM 1400 amplifiers driving the main stacks. They also utilised one Dolby Lake unit at FOH for matrixing, zoning and EQ.

Onstage, monitors came in the form of 16 MP3 wedges and ADLIB drum fills, with FD high packs with an ADLIB double 15 sub for side fills, all driven by Crown amplifiers.

The crew for Stafford's Union Stage were Martin O'Grady (FOH), Steve Pattison (monitors), Steve Cole (patch) and George Puttock (stage). In Chelmsford, Otto Kroymann looked after FOH and systems, Chris Smethhurst did the same for monitors, and they were joined by Jay Smith and Ralf Jane onstage.

Using digital consoles made day 2 extremely easy on both sites, with all the band's show files being EMailed to the other site overnight, and installed ready for their sets the following day.

"The great weather certainly helped the relaxed atmosphere around the sites. We had everyone from MGMT, Human League, Natalie Imbruglia through to No1 seller Calvin Harris pass through our hands and all their production crews were extremely happy. We had many first time Vi6 users comment positively about the desk too,” says Phil Kielty Adlib's Client Manager.