The second installment of the Electric Sea Festival took place at Rostock on Saturday, Dec. 10, 2016, with the likes of legendary Hamburg house DJ Boris Dlugosch and Erfurt-based, chart-storming DJ collective Gestört aber Geil topping the bill. Crowd favorites such as Mike Perry, Danny Avila and many others also featured prominently, much to the delight of the hopping 4,000+ audience.
Sebastian & Rolf Eggert's Lübtheen-based company Music Eggert Veranstaltungstechnik staged the Electric Sea Festivals. The PA hire companies Resonanz Veranstaltungstechnik and Weiss Veranstaltungstechnik delivered the sound system to Rostock.
This time out the biggest challenge was staying power. The audience of electronic dance music aficionados expected an excellent audio experience with slamming beats pumped out at a consistently high level of volume from the first strains at 8 p.m. to the final flourish at 6 a.m. the next morning. This is no mean feat, given this genre's preponderance of percussion and sounds ranging across the frequency spectrum and all the way down to 30 Hz.
The promoters rose to the occasion by rolling out thirty dB Technologies VIO L210 active line array units and twelve VIO S318 active subwoofers driven and controlled by dB Technologies Network software.
Exceeding truss towers' load handling capacity is a no-no, so the crew kept well within each of the twin towers' 450 kg rating by flying twelve VIO L210 enclosures. Four more VIO L210s were deployed to serve as fills, one pair as the left and right out-fills, and another as the in-fills. Twelve dB Technologies VIO S318 subwoofers were paired up in an end-fire array to deliver a mule-kick of a low-end punch.
The outcome was a powerful, high-definition audio image with a sweet spot encompassing the entire frequency range. Although the rig ran continuously, its performance never suffered from the heavy workload. Crisp, shimmering top end. Punchy midrange. Tight, snappy bass with hair-trigger response ranging down to the sub-low frequency of 30 Hz—it was all there, all night long.
Promoter Rolf Eggert put it best: "The new dBTechnologies VIO system delivered impressive performance. Its professional appointments and powerful, clear sound even at very high volumes are big pluses. I was surprised at how quickly the whole rig can be set up and torn down. Thanks to the smart rigging hardware, the entire system was ready to go in a very short time with just two people on hand. That alone could be reason enough to opt for this system, for example, when you're out on the road touring. All components are self-powered, so the two rental companies (Resonanz Veranstaltungstechnik & Weiss Veranstaltungstechnik) that teamed up to furnish the PA were able to deliver the entire rig to the venue in a single Sprinter van. That cuts costs and saves time! What's more, the system's price-performance ratio is extremely good. It was a successful event in every respect."
