ULTR A
Music Festival
PHOTO COURTESY OF WWW. ULTRAMUSICFESTIVAL. COM
Tuning a system using
EASERA’s SysTune.
by Doug Fowler
The Ultra Music Festival takes place near the end of March each year in
Miami, FL. This festival concludes the weeklong Winter Music Conference which is
attended by electronic music artists, producers, and fans from around the world. The
world’s hottest DJ’s perform throughout the festival site, and the site is crammed full
of PA systems from various vendors.
UMF Audio Chief Terry McNeil (“Dr. Bassenstein”) brought me in again this
year for alignment work on a couple of the stages. Particularly, a lot of attention
gets paid to the subwoofer systems. This is Ultra, there is a lot of content below 50
Hz, and the subwoofer systems need to be as right as they can be. Unfortunately,
the tech time was cut on the schedule and I would be restricted to a fairly tight
window, with the ability to obtain any SPL after 5 p.m. on Thursday, with shows
running on Friday and Saturday.
Advance Work
The PA vendor for both the main stage and Bayfront stage was Beach Sound (www.
beachsound.com). The main stage would be equipped with (32x) d&b audiotechnik J8/J12, (16x) J-Sub flown along the J8s, and (24x) B2 subs in three high CSA
