SWG Events were back in the Cardiff Castle grounds for shows with Wales’ national treasure, Sir Tom Jones.
Cardiff Castle has become a new venue for SWG Events. SWG Head of Audio, Simon Purse explained: “The PA had to avoid the walls surrounding the Castle green to avoid any slapback. This was crucial and having DISPLAY [D3 software] really helped. Also since the Castle is in the middle of the City Centre, keeping noise pollution to a minimum was essential—and we had no reported issues offsite at all, as was also the case with Queens of the Stone Age.” The stage is a permanent fixture at the Castle throughout the summer. “Previously we had left and right hang of 12 WPL and an outhang of 10 WPC on stage right to cover some of the audience and the disabled access platform, but we also deployed a similar outhang on stage left to add to the symmetry of the system. Everything worked seamlessly as WPC sounds so similar to the WPL, you don’t have to do a lot to it since it is voiced the same.”
SWG deployed four WPC as front fill, positioned on the stage apron, and TORUS T1530 with SXC118 cardioid subwoofers, two of each per side, firing inwards. They supplied 12 Martin Audio XE500 wedges a house monitor system.
Technical Production Manager, Ian Williams, praised the system: “Both the FOH and monitor rigs have been well received by the touring engineers who have passed through the event,” he confirmed. Their FOH supervisor (and system tech) was Matt Pope, while Oliver Haward was on monitors and Sam Jones was on patch.
Simon Purse had created a generic visualisation plan in Martin Audio’s DISPLAY 3, handing over to Pope to fine-tune on-site. The main focus was on the subwoofers, as Simon Purse explained. “We added a couple more subs in order to deploy a castellated cardioid broadside array—delayed in an arc which helps us control the horizontal dispersion of the array.” In total, they fielded 14 SXH, nine forward facing, five rear facing.
“The new subwoofer tool in D3 enables you to calculate the dispersion a lot easier—it’s now in the software rather than on spreadsheets and to be honest it works really well and is notably smooth,” he concluded.
