Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC), North America’s largest electronic music festival, continued its yearly partnership with PK Sound.

As promoter Insomniac’s flagship event, EDC was attended by over 300,000 people across 3-days of music. Entrusted with a two-stage audio deployment, the PK Sound load-in featured 62 PK Trinity robotic line source elements and 104 PK CX800 2000W dual 18" extended LF subwoofers.

PK’s assignment at EDC focused on the bassPOD and wasteLAND stages that were centre attractions in the festival’s design. Together the stages hosted over 40 performances ranging from headlining stars like GTA, Pendulum, and Flux Pavilion to engineering aficionados such as GJones & EPROM. The speakers powered over 36 hours of music without interruption, passing all durability tests of the famous desert environment.

PK’s large-format Trinity sound system comprised two 16-speaker Trinity arrays at the bassPOD and two 15-speaker Trinity arrays at the wasteLAND stage. Once flown, proprietary 3D Wavefront technology allowed engineers to robotically customize individual Trinity speaker positions within the arrays to optimize and maximize coverage. The use of both vertical and horizontal dispersion inside the Trinity arrays reduced the need for secondary speaker installation, using just 4 VX12 speakers for front fills. Meanwhile 16 of PK’s VX10 compact array modules acted as field delays for reaching crowds that exceeded 500’ in depth. PK’s CX800s created two formidable sub walls, lined with 56 and 48 bins respectively, driving frequencies as low as 25 Hz. Booth setups featured opposing pairs of three PK VX10s over CX800 subs for house-caliber monitoring.

The PK equipment performed in close proximity with pyrotechnics, video-screens, lasers, fireworks and lighting to continue EDC and PK’s partnership of world-class audio production. Overseeing system operations were Front of House Engineers Bryan Andres and Rory Stewart. Working from Digico SD11 digital consoles along with PK’s KONTROL system software, the engineers were able to create a custom soundscape for large crowds.

Andres explained his control over the system: “Trinity’s actuated horn flares make changing the size of the sound field on the fly simple, if the crowd gets bigger we can make the sound field bigger or vice versa. The actuated horn flares also help with keeping the sound from spilling over to the surrounding stages.”

The success of PK Sound at EDC reaffirmed its importance to promoters like Tony Merino and Insomniac’s Bassrush brand. Already known for being the world’s first ever stage to deploy the Trinity line arrays, yearly usage has allowed for their bassPOD stage to surge in size and popularity. While creative elements and crowds have grown, the use of adaptive speaker technology has allowed PK Sound to repeatedly meet the challenges of their audio assignment to deliver world-class sound experiences.