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Techno Fans Celebrate May Day with ther Power of Cohedra
The first-ever techno music application for HK Audio’s Cohedra Coherent Dynamic Response Array system has taken place at the German Mayday festival. Starting early in the evening on 30th April in the Westfalenhallen, Dortmunder, the sold-out event attracted 23,000 hard core techno fans all searching for the best DJs and sound systems to take them through to late morning on 1st May.
Mayday consisted of three separate dance zones in the Westfalenhallen, a multi-purpose indoor events centre. The largest was held in the 13,000-capacity indoor cycle racetrack, while two smaller areas accommodated around 5,000 people each. The Cohedra system was rigged in Area 3 which hosted a plethora of German DJs as well as Detroit techno legend Jeff Mills and Norwegian musician/production team Röyksopp.
HK Audio’s Jorg Knieschewski spent more than two years carrying out the acoustic engineering for Cohedra as well as designing the flying hardware. He configured the Mayday system into four identical towers in each corner of the dancefloor, set to crossfire across the area. Each tower consisted of four CDR 208 T and four CDR 208 S mid/high cabinets with eight CDR 210 Sub subwoofers and four SL218 passive sub low units, each powered by two PR16 Power Racks, pre-configured and pre-installed to drive Cohedra. The total system provided Area 3 with 78,000 Watts of amplifier power.
“I predicted the angles of curvature with HK’s CAPS Aiming Software before rigging the clusters,” explains Knieschewski. “The hall’s relatively low ceiling didn’t allow a great flying height, so I decided that the upper five cabinets should stay flat without any curving, with just the lower three being angled. This allowed a maximum flat SPL response on the dancefloor.”
After the towers were rigged, Knieschewski carried out some measurements to set the correct time alignment from all the cabinets and to select the crossover frequency for the sublows, following this with intensive listening tests to confirm the chosen settings.
“The technical crew at Mayday event said in unison that it sounded like they were listening to the music on huge headphones,” he says. “As a designer of the Cohedra system I’m obviously very pleased when it makes people who work with or listen to it happy.”
The crew weren’t the only ones to be impressed by the sound. Producer and Maydays acoustic designer Klaus Jankhun said: “Many thanks for the sound we heard in your hall; it was simply outstanding. I am very impressed with the Cohedra system. The entire frequency spectrum was very open-sounding and had great dynamics. It didn't matter what kind of bass or other sounds were played, it all sounded excellent, very high fidelity.“
20th May 2004
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