Mexico. EDC Mexico's electrifying experience descended upon the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City for the fourth consecutive year, creating a captivating world of music with a carnival atmosphere that attracted more than 110,000 fans from all over Mexico and beyond. In the main stage, Kinetic Field, PK Sound deployed its largest Trinity system to date, covering an area of over 450,000 square feet.
Insomniac Events selected PK Sound for the second year in a row to help power the EDC Mexico experience; this year's deployment on the main stage, Kinetic Field, based on the success of last year's systems on the Neon Garden and Circuit Grounds stages.
For the sound system at Kinetic Field, PK Sound implemented a total of 81 Trinity modules, throughout the enclosure in 9 individual pendants. 4 towers of flown matrices (consisting of 12,14,14 and 12 modules respectively) were installed across the front of the stage. At a distance of 300' there were 2 delay towers with 13 Trinity modules each and 3 modules were stacked on the ground for VIP area coverage. At 520', an additional 3 delay towers with 14 VX10 compact line modules per tower covered the rear of the headquarters.
A total of 142 CX800 high-power 18" subwoofers were used across the headquarters in various formations. 106 were triple stacked, 1/4 wave separated throughout the entire stage, with 18 more in 2 cardioid groups at the base of the midfield and another 18 used to fill VIP side. The resulting sound field was very consistent with the strong coverage all the way to the back of the audience, which extended 800' of the stage.
"The Insomniac team is very pleased with the power and transparency of the Trinity system deployed by PK Sound at EDC Mexico. The main stage, Kinetic Field, had an audience area that accommodated 90,000 attendees and had a very large footprint that every square foot covered needed. Whether the festival-goers were at the front of the stage, or 800 feet away, they were thrilled with a powerful, crystal clear sound," said Forrest Hunt, executive producer of Insomniac Events.
Not only is it critical to manage sound quality safely and accurately, but PK Sound also strives to deliver the highest audio quality at all of its events. EDC Mexico was an important festival with key technical considerations to keep in mind.
"Heat and dry air has an adverse effect on high frequencies, which makes it a challenge to pull to the back of the crowd. We had mitigated this by putting the two rows of the delay towers at 300' and 520' of the stage. It took a lot of energy to reach all the fans on our stage," said Ian Hicks, FOH engineer for PK Sound.
"We had recommended 6 field delay towers however due to venue limitations we were asked to go to 5 towers. For a standard PA this might have been difficult to accommodate due to coverage issues, but as Trinity is able to adjust the horizontal coverage from 50 to 120°, we were able to shape the sound field to compensate," said Jeremy Bridge, President and CEO of PK Sound.
An additional factor that came up during the sound check was a bit of overlap that occurred initially, resulting in time alignment and phase issues in certain locations due to the need for so many general coverage towers. The limitations of the stage meant that Trinity's four main queues could not be extended, so using the system's features , the dispersion angles were tightened to eliminate overlap, cleaning up the sound while maintaining the high-quality audio that is so crucial to provide an incredible experience to so many fans.
"It's definitely a long journey from San Francisco, and part of the team even came from Canada, but in the end it's worth seeing the smiles on everyone's faces," Jeremy said.
