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TW AUDIO LIGHTS UP LEEDS CASTLE FIREWORKS WITH SRD TW AUDiO overcomes a challenging environment to deliver a big sound.
As rockets erupt in the sky and a thundering score fills the air, the last thing on most people’s minds at a major fireworks show is the quality of audio coverage. Yet every year during one of the UK’s most prestigious fireworks displays, Stuart Roberts, Managing Director of regional events specialist SRD Group, can be found paying close attention to everything but the explosions above. The event in question is the Leeds Castle Fireworks, an annual celebration hosted in the grounds of the castle which, despite its name, is located not in the North of England but deep in the Southern county of Kent. Dubbed “the loveliest castle in the world”, it stands on an historic site to the East of the ancient village of Leeds, where a fort of sorts has stood since 857 AD. In the centuries since, a succession of castles has risen and fallen, with the current, beautiful building having been completed in 1823. Few sites offer such a spectacular or quintessentially British setting for fireworks. Perhaps not surprisingly, during the course of that history, little thought was given to how the combination of a large moat and uneven topography would affect the positioning of line arrays in years to come.
“The brief with Leeds Castle is always to cover the crowd with a ‘big’ sound,” explained Roberts. “It’s one of the top fireworks displays in the whole country in terms of its prestige and attendance, plus for us it’s important to maintain our close relationship with a famous Heritage site. But the only way we can achieve that big impact is to fly the PA next to the castle itself, which in every other sense is the wrong thing to do because it places the system too far from the audience, firing over the moat. The closest audience member is more than 100m away, and then the audience extends a further 300m beyond that. “Then there’s the ground; the topography naturally rises and falls, sloping up from the moat in some places and down in others, so it’s extremely difficult to cover consistently. Finally, it’s a very wide site, requiring approximately 180-degree coverage.” Over the course of a number of years, SRD Group has experimented with different solutions. Prior to SRD’s involvement, another company’s subwoofer deployment caused plaster to start falling from the Castle’s ceiling, so every step that SRD takes is carefully considered in advance. “We looked at options to go around the moat, but then you have to have lots of 26
