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Aspects of Coachella

The indie music faithful gathered in the California desert for the seventh annual two-day Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at the end of April. Continuing the practice of past years, Sennheiser sent a support team to look after the many microphone and

personal monitor systems in use at the event, which also featured Turbosound Aspect loudspeakers on two of the five main performance stages.

This year, the attraction of Madonna's festival debut drew record numbers of fans - reportedly in excess of 45,000 on each day - out into the heat, whichsoared close to 100 degrees. Nearly 30,000 packed into and around the Sahara Tent, which was doubled in size from previous years to accommodate the expected crush, to see the dance music diva debut her upcoming touring show. In common with many of the artists on the weekend's schedule, Madonna used her long-time favorite Sennheiser vocal mic - the wireless SKM 3072 super-cardioid condenser to wow the fans.

Kristy Jo Winkler, Sennheiser's US artist relations manager and Mark Saunders, Sennheiser's UK artist relations manager were at Coachella to handle the needs of and support endorsees such as Massive Attack (e 935), Franz Ferdinand (e 840), Bloc Party (e 935), Depeche Mode (wireless SKM 935 G2 vocal mics), Scissor Sisters (wireless SKM 535 G2 vocal mics), and Coheed & Cambria (wireless SKM 935 G2 vocal mics).

Rat Sound outfitted two of the performance stages with Turbosound Aspect speaker systems. According to Manny Barajas, Rat Sound's crew chief in the Gobi Tent, "We had four flown TA-890H mid-high Aspect boxes and three install version Aspect boxes in a ground-stacked configuration on each side. We also had nine of the TA-890L low boxes, and two of the TSW-218 subs per side. In the larger Mojave Tent," he continues, "we flew six Aspect boxes a side, and we had two Aspect boxes with the rotated horn configuration for a ground-stacked front fill. We had nine of the low boxes on each side, and we had four of the 218 subs per side." Barajas notes that the flown Aspect cabinets only recently returned from a nationwide solo tour by Pink Floyd front man, David Gilmour.

The Aspect Series not only provides great vertical control, but also very accurate horizontal control. With each high-output Turbosound Aspect cabinet generating a phase-coherent curved wavefront with a 25-degree horizontal by 15-degree vertical dispersion pattern through the use of proprietary multi-cellular Polyhorn technology, reflections are reduced to a minimum and horizontal control is maximized, resulting in clear, clean and extremely directional sound.

In addition to Madonna's highly anticipated performance, this year's Coachella Festival also featured Tool, Mogwai, Daft Punk, Sigur Ros, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Kanye West, Matisyahu and Common. All of the Sennheiser artists were reportedly pleased to see Sennheiser representation at the event and had nothing but good words about the products.

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Aspects of Coachella

25th May 2006

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