DJ and Record Producer, Lorin Ashton has been performing as Bassnectar since 2002. This 2018 instalment of Bass Center marks the 11th anniversary since he began headlining. “Bass Center is his most iconic show of the year,” said Kyle Pace, Bassnectar’s front-of-house Audio Engineer. “There are some big shoes to fill with that show, and the fans’ expectations are sky-high.”
Arlen Cormack, Senior Vice President of Touring and Production at PK Sound and system designer for the event, said the bar was raised even higher for Bass Center XI, in part because many fans have attended multiple Bassnectar shows and can compare experiences to other indoor and outdoor venues. “I would guess that probably under 20-per cent of the fan-base was local,” Cormack said of Bass Center XI. “It’s sort of like a travelling carnival. For all of his seasonal events, a lot of the same people will follow him wherever he goes.”
Boasting an arena floor that’s nearly the size of a football field, the Hampton Coliseum has hosted numerous musical acts. Despite being a popular music venue, however, the Coliseum posed some challenges for electronic music acts when it came to balancing frequencies at the far reaches of the venue’s seating. “Bassnectar is very adamant about wanting every single person at his events to feel like they have a speaker directly in front of them,” Pace explained. “So that’s what we tried to accomplish.”
Cormack and Pace started with 16 Trinity Advanced Robotic Line Array boxes per side for the main hangs, which were set to a full 270-degree pattern, with the sound field in the top three boxes narrowed for a longer throw to help the mids and highs reach the top bleachers. In addition, they included outfills of six Trinity boxes per side to cover the space directly right and left of the stage, with the sound field carved toward the audience to avoid unwanted reflections. Evaluating the room before the event, both Cormack and Pace noticed bass traps in the furthest bleachers.
Since it wouldn’t be a Bassnectar show without the namesake low end, Cormack and Pace didn’t hold back when it came to subs. Building upon a foundation of 32 PK Sound CX800 High Power Subwoofers on the ground, Cormack surprised Pace during setup with an additional 12 PK Sound Gravity 30 High Power Subwoofers, which they also deployed on the ground, splitting them up to fill in the bleachers on the far right and left sides of the stage. Finally, Cormack and Pace also decided to fly six PK CX800s per side behind the main hangs, which they time-aligned with the PK Gravity 30s for a uniform arc wall throughout the arena.
During tests, Pace said: “Audience reaction at the sold-out shows was equally enthusiastic. “Fans reached out to let us know how great it sounded. And we couldn’t have done that without PK Sound’s speakers. What we did in Hampton this year — it would have smoked any other system out there.”