The sleepy rural town of Kilkivan in Queensland, Australia, was recently transformed into a hive of activity as thousands of horse lovers – and their horses – descended for the first edition of Cowgirls Gathering; three days of interactive workshops to celebrate the western lifestyle of women all over Australia and beyond.
Production specialists Gigawatt Sound & Light based just north of Brisbane were contracted to supply clear, precise audio throughout the festival, which they chose to do with KV2.
The requirement was extremely broad ranging, from background music, to paging, to foreground audio distribution and speech reinforcement. All systems were in use from 7am to midnight every day. Gigawatt’s Technical Systems manager, Andrew Wood takes up the story:
“This was an unusual assignment for us – we’re more accustomed to loud rock & roll bands and festivals, or corporate shows for which we supply turnkey AV, but it was thoroughly enjoyable – we sent a couple of guys down for a site assessment in the days prior to the festival to ensure an optimal deployment”
Gigawatt supplied systems for the main covered arena, plus a large open air corral known as Campdraft, and the Education Tent which also doubled as a performance space for live bands. Ben Finlay, owner of Gigawatts selected the compact, 2-way active EX10 loudspeakers for the main arena, each deployed on a single bus per speaker to allow the various audio signals to be routed to each speaker as required. A number of speakers faced the crowd whilst others faced into the arena for the performers, most of whom were on horseback with headset mics.
For Campdraft, Finlay came up with a different solution: “This was interesting,” recalls Wood. “We needed a mid-throw box for training, speech and foreground music playback. Ben decided on the ES1.0s with no subs as a vocal reinforcement system; the boxes go down to 130Hz making it perfect for this application. It was the first time I’d experienced a set of 1.0s without subs but given that we generally roll off the voice at about 125Hz, the 130Hz crossover point suited perfectly. The 3-way ES1.0 delivered a perfect, natural sound and got the sound everywhere we needed.”
The final challenge was the Education Tent. “Now this was a funny one – by day it was Zoom meetings across the globe, and in the evening it was all live bands, so pretty diverse!” says Wood. “For FoH requirements we used a pair of EX12s pole-mounted onto the accompanying EX2.5 sub – it’s by far one of the most versatile and best-sounding rigs for this sort of application – the bottom end is tight and the EX12s with that horn – wow! Naturally all the DI boxes on the band stage were an assortment of KV2 JK Series devices.”
“We had several comments from the client, MCs and others involved in the event who commented on just how clear the audio was and how much of a pleasure it had been not only to enjoy completely trouble-free operation but to be able to hear themselves clearly wherever they were on site.”