Sven Väth @ Cocoon Prague

SVEN VÄTH @ COCOON PRAGUE

An extensive Funktion-One system, supplied by native rental firm Force Production, sounds Sven Väth’s performance at Cocoon Party’s 20th anniversary in Prague, Czech Republic.

Sven Väth is widely regarded as the leader of the techno revolution. The German DJ and producer emerged from the early-1980s Frankfurt underground and pioneered an electronic music uprising – with both Germany and Ibiza being his beat-fuelled playgrounds.

He originally started Cocoon in 1996 as a series of parties, pouring in his savings to help fund the events around Germany and North America. Though this wasn’t Väth’s most financially successful endeavour of a glittering career, it gave rise to Cocoon’s re-birth as a booking agency in 1999. The events and record label soon followed.

Since then, Cocoon Recordings has been the launchpad for many of the biggest DJs in the world and the Cocoon brand has become globally recognised thanks countless parties – each one led by a forward-thinking music policy and enriched by high production values.

This is certainly true of the Cocoon party in Prague on 10th May, where Väth was joined by Ilario Alicante and Andre Galuzzi at Vystaviste Holesovice in the north of the capital city. The requirement for Funktion-

One sound has been capably handled by Force Production.

The company is headed up by Kevin Dobson and Tomas Mazdra. They are long-term partners of the British loudspeaker manufacturer. He said: “Since our relationship began with Funktion-One back in 2010, our company has grown from being just three guys to 15. A big part of this development is directly attributed to Funktion-One. While all the rental companies around Prague were using the same speakers and were engaged in a race to the bottom when it came to budgets, we decided to set ourselves out from the crowd and make a distinction between the rest of the pro audio in the country and ourselves.

“When brought Funktion-One to our market and it very quickly became clear that there was a superior option to what other companies could offer. This has translated into us having our own market in our territory and from this the business continues to go from strength to strength. One of the clear reasons for this is Funktion-One’s determination not to follow what the rest of the industry is currently doing.”

The Force Production crew on site in Prague.

For Cocoon, Force Production deployed a Funktion-One system comprising left and right stacks 4 Evo 7T speakers - 3 on the bottom row and one in the centre on top, together with 2 R3SH as infills. Monitoring was handled by a pair of PSM318s.

Head of Audio, Alex Limburg said: “The Evos are fantastic - I really enjoy working with them. They are a real move forward in the Axhead range and the PSM318s can’t be beaten when it comes to DJ monitoring.”

The bass was setup in an asymmetric configuration – a technique that has been pioneered and advocated by Funktion-One founder, Tony Andrews. This approach, positioning the bass on one side of the room and the sub-bass on the other, ensures singularity of delivery and avoids cancellations, resulting in punchy, well-defined bass. In this case, Force Production had 8 F124 bass enclosures – in pairs, 4 high – on stage left, and 2 F132 sub-bass units on stage right.

Both the F132 and F124 represent important developments in bass technology, not only for Funktion-One but for the wider industry.

The F132 is an extraordinarily powerful horn-loaded bass enclosure, which features Powersoft’s M-Force 10kW linear transducer and Funktion- One’s specially designed cone and enclosure technology. Its single 32-inch driver gives a frequency response of 24Hz to 70Hz.

Tony Andrews said: “With the 32-inch F132, we introduced something unique to the market: transient in the sub frequencies, as far down as 25Hz. From there, we felt there was potential to go further by using the knowledge we’d gained when developing the F132 to create a 24-inch bass speaker.”

Two voice coils and intense magnetic flux control the F124s 24-inch

cone with impressive accuracy, ensuring excellent transient response and extended depth to below 30Hz. Limburg enthused: “The F124 is a superb piece of work. The responses from it are phenomenal. I love it.”

On the asymmetric bass configuration, he added: “We were able to achieve amazing consistency of the bass throughout the room, not having to deal with any tunnels or troughs. I was very happy with the result and I hope the audience was too.”

The Cocoon system was powered by Full Fat Audio amplification - two FFA6004s, 2 FFA8004s and 5 FFA1000s. Limburg said: “In my opinion, FFAs are the best. The reliability is excellent, and you know what you can get out of them. They’re a great bunch of guys doing some great work.”

The system was controlled processed with XTA processing. All inputs from the DJs ran through an analogue Midas Verona.

Force Production also supplied the lighting and video equipment, including Robe lights, TAF truss, Panasonic projection, and an MA Lighting grandMA console.

Dobson reflected: “We’re happy with how it went, especially the audio delivery. The asymmetric bass arrangement is a fairly new technique for us and we’re very pleased with the result. It’s always a pleasure to work with world-renowned events like Cocoon and with pioneering artists like Sven Väth. They have high standards but you only need to look at the manufacturers we’re partnered with to understand that we do too.” TPi Photos: Ry Hallada @rxyz www.cocoon.net www.forceproduction.eu