Big Sky Acoustics manages the noise at Cambridge Folk Festival

Steve Gosling & Richard Vivian - Big Sky

Entertainment noise control specialists Big Sky Acoustics managed the noise monitoring for Cambridge Folk Festival 2010. Richard Vivian headed up the noise monitoring team over the four day event ensuring off-site noise levels complied with the strict limits stipulated in the licence.

One of the UK’s longest established dates on the festival calendar Cambridge Folk Festival brings 12,000 people to Cherry Hinton in the suburbs of the city. As an established event most local residents appreciate there will be some disruption, but the management of noise is always a priority for the festival organisers.

Working closely with the technical crew from PA specialists Canegreen, the Big Sky team correlated off-site noise levels directly with the sound system levels from each stage subtly regulating overall levels and individual frequencies.

“The idea of just relying on automatic limiting equipment really would be a last resort for me both in terms of a realistic control method and the detrimental impact such a system would have on sound quality” says Vivian. “Instead an initial A-weighted level is agreed at each front of house position and then spectral “tweaks” occur through the day. When something needs to be adjusted we fill in a slip of paper that has third octaves and overall levels clearly marked on it: So if we need 3dB less at 80Hz we just write in -3dB in the 80Hz box on the ticket and drop it off with the front of house engineer. In this way we have very specific control but it is the engineer that implements the final control.”

Engineers like the ticket system although the slips of paper do get nicknamed “speeding tickets”. It was developed by Big Sky to improve communication without distracting the engineer during a live set. Unlike radioing levels through it means everything is documented and less likely to be misunderstood or forgotten.

There where no logged complaints from the public about music noise at this year’s festival which we believe to be a first. Vivian comments “This doesn’t mean that local residents didn’t hear the event during the day, it is, after all, a festival in a park in a residential part of the city. But what they did notice is that peaks in level, often caused by changing climatic conditions, were rapidly corrected and across the four days noise levels didn’t drift upwards.”

Big Sky Acoustics is developing a bespoke wireless based noise monitoring system to improve data correlation at large sites but insists that skilled people remain vital in assessing and controlling noise at outdoor events.

Tags: Big Sky Accoustics, Cambridge Folk Festival, Event Magazine

Category: Event PA and Audio