Every July, Germany’s Weeze Airport is transformed into the “City of Dreams” for Parookaville, one of the world’s most iconic EDM festivals. This year’s event, held 19 to 21 July, welcomed 225,000 fans for performances by 300 DJs on 13 stages, led by marquee acts including Hardwell, Steve Aoki, Armin van Buuren, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, and KSHMR.
For the third year, Germany-based event production company POOLgroup delivered premium sound for Parookaville’s Mainstage, in collaboration with Meyer Sound, debuting the groundbreaking pairing of PANTHER large-format linear line array loudspeakers and 2100‑LFC™ low-frequency control elements at the 2024 festival.
POOLgroup has been supplying Meyer Sound systems for Parookaville’s Mainstage since 2022, with Technical Directors Simon Jermer and Jan Flerlage providing system design, planning, and implementation, and Project Manager Robert Sommer being responsible for POOLgroups full-service approach in design, lighting, video, and many more services for the festival.
POOLgroup invested in PANTHER before hearing the system, Jermer explained. “We already had years of experience with nearly the whole range of Meyer Sound products. That built up a trust in the development of new products.
“The key facts we had about PANTHER let us know that it would be a highly flexible PA,” he continued. “PANTHER is clearer and more ‘honest’ than any other system. However, it also demonstrates its unique quality. This makes it a perfect scalable tool.”
The Parookaville Mainstage is vast, with a capacity of 70,000 and an audience area measuring 490 feet (150m) wide and 770ft (235m) deep. This year, the stage was supported by 188 PANTHER loudspeakers, 36 2100-LFC elements, 69 1100‑LFC elements, and 36 LEOPARD compact linear line array loudspeakers, configured as a three-zone relay system with four towers at the stage, four towers in the first relay, and two towers in the second relay.
“We’re dividing and conquering, literally,” said Meyer Sound Senior Technical Support & Education Specialist, Merlijn van Veen, who provided system design guidance. “We compartmentalised the audience into three thirds, that is, main PA, first, and second relays, the idea being that each system stays within its intended zone to minimise crosstalk into neighbouring zones and to reduce leakage into the environment. We’re basically nose-diving all of the sound in each respective zone.”
The FOH position was located 350ft (105m) from the stage in the second zone, which preserved the festival’s focus on visuals. “The FOH is not in the coverage of the main PA, which in any other application would be highly unusual,” van Veen explained. “But these events are all about optics.”
Setting FOH further back allowed for a visually clean stage, ensuring that the crowd, phones held high, could capture the full vista without obstructions. “Front of house goes in the first relay and not in the main, which is another incentive for relays,” he says. “With a relay approach, you’re not trying to burden the main PA with covering the entire audience front to back. You’re creating these zones, and that gives you an improved chance, especially at front of house, of delivering an uncompromised PANTHER experience, because you have less crosstalk coming off of the stage.”
2100-LFCs were flown in gradient end-fire arrays, with 1100-LFCs on the ground. “Previously, the festival was deploying horizontal subwoofer arrays, which are the staple in EDM because there are no power alleys and power valleys,” van Veen explained. “But horizontal subwoofer arrays are notorious for their reduced efficiency. You’re leaving a lot of SPL on the table, and making up for that significantly inflates costs. We said, ‘instead of trying to spread all that energy over a square audience region, why don’t we turn the same subwoofer complement into two massive end-fire arrays and have them point out in a V-shape where each array covers one audience half, such that you don’t get these power alleys and power valleys associated with left-right deployments, except for a small mold mark where they meet in the middle?’ That’s worked really well.”
“The 2100-LFC is playing as tight and dry as a 900-LFC, with the low-frequency range of the 1100-LFC,” said Flerlage. “This makes it the perfect flown extension for the PANTHER system. In combination with the 1100-LFC on the ground it brought more directivity and tightness to the system with the headroom you need for a venue as big as the Parookaville Mainstage.”
“Directivity is one of the most important things when you bring music from the club to 70,000 people on a field,” added Flerlage. “In combination with PANTHER, 2100‑LFC is the ideal extension.”
This July, between Parookaville and the concurrent Deichbrand Festival in Cuxhaven, POOLgroup was out with more than a thousand Meyer Sound speakers in one weekend. PANTHER and 2100-LFC’s low weight and compact profile allowed for more efficient truck packs. “The biggest game changer is the weight of the system,” said Jermer. “Taking into account that we had close to 200 PANTHER cabinets on the Parookaville Mainstage, we could definitely reduce the amount of trucks.”
As Parookaville continues to set the bar for EDM festivals, the collaboration between Meyer Sound and POOLgroup ensures that the audience has an immersive, high-fidelity experience. “The collaboration with Meyer Sound and the experience of Meyer Sound Technical Support are very constructive,” said Flerlage. “The current loudspeaker design, and the resulting sound of the stage, is top class.”
