L-Acoustics takes on Pentaport Rock Festival’s biggest challenge

For the past 13 years, Incheon, South Korea has hosted the Pentaport Rock Festival, held in the city’s Pentaport Park for three days each summer. Produced by Yescom Entertainment, it is one of the country’s biggest live music events and covers a wide variety of musical genres. This year it featured the industrial rock of Nine Inch Nails, the moody electronica of Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda, the shifting nuances of My Bloody Valentine, and rocking performances from local favourites including Jaurim and Daybreak. But for all of the diverse styles, the L-Acoustics K1 and K2 system, supplied by local rental company Seoul Sound, delivered consistency of SPL and tonal balance across every inch of the main KB Kookmin Starshop Stage’s extensive field.

When Yescom Entertainment’s An Heung Chan accepted the role of Production Manager for the festival, he was both honoured and excited at the prospect of working on such a mammoth event. “We know how crazy it can be to cope with so many bands from so many different musical genres, all sharing the same stage over three days,” he says. “Dealing with schedule and set changes took a lot of time, but audio was ultimately the most important part of the production.”
 

With An Heung Chan having had many good experiences working with Seoul Sound and its L-Acoustics systems, he was confident that the company’s Kim Do Seok and his team of engineers would be a great asset to the event. “Being a sound engineer and musician myself, I had great expectations of the sound system,” he adds.
 

“We chose K1 and K2 because we knew it would consistently cover the entire main stage field, which is 100 meters wide by 160 meters deep,” explains Seoul Sound System Engineer, Seo Hyung Man. “As always, the design we did in L-Acoustics Soundvision program was really accurate and LA Network Manager software provided all the tools we needed through each step of the setup, tuning and monitoring in real time.”
 

The two main arrays for the KB Kookmin Starshop Stage each comprised 12 K1 underhung with four K2. Additional fill for the side audience was from four arrays of four of Seoul Sounds ‘faithful’ V-DOSC, whilst 12 Kara were distributed in pairs across the stage lip to cover the front rows.

With the low-end frequencies catered for by KS28 and SB28 subwoofers—16 of each were evenly distributed across the front of the stage in cardioid mode—the system provided everything that Yescom was looking for. On stage, 14 X15 HiQ provided foldback, proving that they can handle the most demanding of tasks, reports Hyung Man.

“The choice of K1 and K2 arrays was excellent; they work seamlessly together to provide optimum SPL for the main stage,” concludes An Heung Chan. “The wide dispersion of the K2 provided good coverage for the front audience, along with superb sound quality. The ability to combine the K1 and K2 is just great. The system was gladly accepted by all, there were no surprises and it sounded absolutely perfect for every genre of music!”

About L-Acoustics
Founded in 1984 near Paris, France, L-Acoustics is the market leader in professional sound reinforcement technologies. With over 400 team members worldwide and offices in Paris, London, Los Angeles, and New York, L-Acoustics is present in over 80 countries via our network of Certified Providers. Focused on solutions that elevate the audience experience, more than 20% of L-Acoustics’ talent is devoted to R&D in the areas of acoustics, applications, mechanics, electronics, signal processing, and software development.

Recognized for pioneering the line source array, L-Acoustics continues to shape the future of the professional audio industry with L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound technology, a multidimensional, object-based approach to designing, mixing, and processing sound that results in extremely natural and intelligible audio and a more vibrant, and authentic connection between artists and their fans.

L-Acoustics technologies can be heard in places like the Hollywood Bowl, the NFL Cardinals State Farm Stadium or the Philharmonie de Paris, as well as the world’s top-grossing festivals, the London, Sochi and Rio Olympics, and on tour with world-class artists such as Adele, Pearl Jam, Lorde, and Depeche Mode.