JBL powers inaugural Cultfest Festival
Published: ASIA
INDIA: The inaugural edition of Cultfest, a new experimental music festival drawing in bands from around the world, was supported with a Harman Professional sound reinforcement solution. Designed and deployed by SD Audio, the system comprised JBL Vertec speakers, Crown amplifiers and a Soundcraft desk.
Taking place at the ManPho Convention Grounds in Bangalore, Cultfest 2015 was focused around metal music and featured headline performances from death metal bands Cannibal Corpse and Suicide Silence. ‘Everything was awesome about Cultfest,’ enthused Cannibal Corpse FOH engineer Jonathan Jarell, who was using a Soundcraft Vi6 for the FOH mix. ‘The production was outstanding. The Vertec system sounded amazing right from the start, with no work on my end. Even though I have worked with Vertecs at many locations around the world, this is the first time I found them really well tuned and aligned perfectly. The system techs and the stage engineers are very professional and provided great support. I can’t thank everyone enough.’
SD Audio deployed a main system comprising 20 JBL Vertec VT4889, four VT4886 as down fills and 16 VT4880A/CSR subwoofers, all powered by Crown ITech-HD amplifiers. SD Audio chief engineer Mallesh Devadiga specified an Avid Venue SC48 console for stage monitoring. ‘The I/O 16 insert card on the SC48 made it extremely flexible to use external processers and EQs,’ explained Mr Devadiga. ‘Stage monitoring was a breeze with the VT4886 and VT4883 system as side fills and the VRX915M.’
JBL’s HiQnet Performance Manager also won great praise from the SD Audio team. ‘The Vertecs as always were sounding fantastic,’ said Vishnu Pandit, managing director of SD Audio. ‘Now the JBL HiQnet Performance Manager has simplified the job for the system engineer to align and tune the system. The entire system at Cultfest was designed and tuned by Sanak Pandit our system engineer and he did a great job.’
‘JBL HiQNet Performance Manager has simplified my job as a system tech,’ offered Sanak Pandit. ‘It is now so easy to do the system tuning, time-align, bandpass check and EQ the PA, and also do any array correction. I used Easera SysTunes to fine-tune the system.’