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DragonSpirit Breathes Fire Over the Thames
A million people thronged to the banks of the Thames during the weekend of September 15-16 to attend the Mayor’s Thames Festival. This annual event — which takes place between Westminster and Tower Bridges — celebrates London’s river with continuous open air arts, pyrotechnics, illuminations, river events, street theatre, massed choirs and music, and is designed to transform the public open spaces along the waterfront.
The Festival is now in its tenth year, and for the past seven of those Suffolk-based Pyramid Audio have been nominated main contractor for the sound stages. For the first time this year they committed themselves to using a single loudspeaker brand — and filled all six stages with DragonSpirit systems.
Fleece, the owner of Pyramid Audio, starting using DragonSpirit speakers almost two years ago and has subsequently featured them at various events around the UK including the Glastonbury Festival, Strawberry Fair and Eastern Haze.
His company started out buying floor monitors, but sensing the responsive nature of DragonSpirit, and the fact that his feedback was being fast-tracked to the company’s Chinese manufacturers to be incorporated into subsequent product upgrades, impressed him greatly. Soon he was investing in the whole portfolio.
On the banks of the Thames, the DragonSpirit rigs functioned under BSS Omnidrive system management, powered by Lab Gruppen 6400 and 4000 Series amps. The rigs ranged from a discreet bandstand on Southwark Bridge — where four DS115X (single 15in + 1.7in horn) provided front-of-house sound with a further pair for monitors — to a set of six compact DL3 line array enclosures (three per side) plus four DS215B twin 15in sub bass units on the Hubble Bubble stage in Jubilee Gardens.
The Jive and Tango stages had two identical systems; each comprised four DS112 speakers (one at each corner of the dancefloor) and a single DS118B sub bass unit. Foldback was supplied by two pairs of matched DS115X, which were driven in 2-way active configuration. These stages created a small outdoor club environment which gave an exceptionally clean controllable sound, within the Festival’s strict SPL limits.
The versatility of the DragonSpirit range ticked all the boxes for Fleece. He said: “Now that this has become a multi-stage event there are additional environmental and residential issues to consider, and the controllability of the system allows us to address those issues.
“As for the products, the line arrays, which we run biamped, have great projection and the 2 x 15’s give a lot of punch. When you couple the two together the frequency goes down as far as an 18in subwoofer and doesn’t leave that hole between the 100Hz-150Hz range.”
The result was a weekend which both DragonSpirit and Pyramid Audio can look back on with pride.
Commenting on the Festival, Mayor of London Ken Livingstone said: “The Thames Festival has grown to become a landmark event in London's cultural calendar — a wonderfully diverse weekend of events for everyone to enjoy.”
In picture: panoramic view of the Mayor’s Thames Festival; the view from one of the sound stages looking out to the London Eye.
19th September 2007
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