Billed as the “first taste of summer,” the 7th annual BottleRock Festival once again sold out drawing some 120,000 attendees by mixing music with the best of Napa food, wine, and beer. And VUE Rental Network Partner, Delicate Productions, was there to provide audio and lighting services for all the performance venues at the three day event.
In addition to the secondary Bai Stage, which has featured a VUE al-Class Line Array System for the past five years, Delicate expanded the use of VUE’s Acoustic Linearity system to include the larger Firefox stage. Aside from accommodating headline act Pharrell’s rider, the expanded VUE presence enabled Delicate to improve coverage and the sonic experience across two premiere stages, while maximizing capacity and revenue for the event organizer, Latitude 32.
“We’ve run a VUE rig on at BottleRock for the past five years with great results we were excited to deploy another VUE system on the larger Firefox Stage. It fulfilled Pharrell’s rider, and we knew we would set an entirely new benchmark for performance on that stage,” said President of Delicate Productions, Jason Alt.
“What’s more, we knew that the VUE al-Class could easily meet hang-weight limitations, while also ensuring consistent coverage across the entire audience area—without the need for delays, which take up valuable real estate that could otherwise be used for audience space.”
The larger Firefox stage main system comfortably covered a throw of more than 350 ft and consisted of left and right hangs of 16 al-12’s. FOH low-frequency support was provided by 28 hs-221 ACM infrasonic dual 21-inch subwoofers. Front fill was courtesy of six al-8 elements positioned across the front of the stage. The 16 discrete monitor system utilized a combination of VUE hm-112, hm-115, and hm-212 stage monitors along with four al-12’s on top of two al-12SB dual 18-inch subwoofers per side as side fills. A combination of rack-mounted and onboard VUEDrive Systems Engines handled all power and processing for the FOH system and stage monitors. All the DSP/amplifiers were controlled over an ethernet network using SystemVUE software.
The Baja stage’s slightly more intimate environment’s main system consisted of two hangs of eight al-12 elements each. Low-frequency support was provided by fourteen hs-221 ACM infrasonic subwoofers positioned just in front of the stage. Six h-208 low profile high output ultra-definition systems were placed atop the row of subs for front fill.
On stage, 12 discrete monitor mixes were delivered by a combination of VUE hm-112, hm-212, and hm-115 stage ultra-definition monitors delivered 12 discrete monitor mixes on stage. Three stacks of h-12’s on top of hs-28 to provides drum monitor and side fills. An additional pair of h-12 high definition systems provided VIP-area support.
“Most concert arrays struggle to work well beyond 300 feet from the stage,” expanded London. “All the way out to the 300 ft mark, the VUE rig was still performing well, the vocal’s stayed close, and everything was tight with no break-up. The array configuration really worked in terms of minimizing top-end fall-off at a distance. It was great to be able to get 30 plus FOH mixers in front of the al-12’s,” he said. Acts performing on the VUE stages included Santana, Pharrell, Cypress Hill, AJR, Bigg Boi, Flogging Molly, Juanes.