Roger Waters Performs with L-ACOUSTICS at Coachella

Pink Floyd's magnum opus, Dark Side Of The Moon was recently brought to life as a live surround-sound concert 35 years after its release by .Roger Waters at the ninth annual Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio, California. For this year's sound reinforcement duties, festival promoter Goldenvoice again called upon Oxnard-based Rat Sound Systems, who utilized more than 200 L-ACOUSTICS loudspeakers on the four largest stage areas. Of particular note was an eight-tower surround system around the Main Stage audience for Waters' headlining sets, which, accompanied by massive pyrotechnics and a giant inflatable pig floating overhead, rounded out the third and final evening of the festival.

Coachella's Main Stage, where Prince and Jack Johnson had performed as headliners on the two preceding nights, featured left and right main PA arrays each comprised of 15 L-Acoustics' V-DOSC enclosures with three dV-DOSC hung below. Far left and right crowd areas were addressed by two additional side hangs each featuring six more V-Dosc flown above six dV-Dosc. Six ARCS for side-fills and two dozen 115XT HiQ stage wedges rounded out the Main Stage's L-Acoustics loudspeaker complement.

For surround and delay, Rat Sound set up eight towers cumulatively boasting an additional four dozen V-Dosc, 12 dV-Dosc, 12 Kudo and six Arcs enclosures. "The center left and right towers had six surround sound V-Dosc firing toward the stage and dV-Dosc delays firing to the back," notes Jon Monson, Rat Sound's head of touring. "The delays were used for everyone, but only Roger used the surrounds."

Waters' first set, which was peppered with classic Pink Floyd songs like "Wish You Were Here", "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", "Comfortably Numb," and "Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)", used the surround setup only very sparingly. However, during the intermission after his first set, the surround system came to life as a host of rain forest sounds enveloped the audience, leading Waters' into his second set, the re-creation of the entire Dark Side Of The Moon album in surround sound.

"Roger Waters' surround sound was the most amazing reproduction of an album's sound I have ever heard," Kevan Wilkins, Goldenvoice production manager for the entire event. "I was very grateful to stand next to Trip Khalaf, Roger's front-of-house sound man, for the performance."

Rat Sound's main man, Dave Rat, agrees: "Roger Waters' Coachella performance was one of the best all around shows I have ever seen and heard. And I wasn't the only one who felt that way; the general consensus was that his show was flat-out amazing. I doubt that you could find anyone who was there that would disagree.

"Part of that success can certainly be attributed to the L-Acoustics system, which sounded great and covered very well," Rat adds. "Practically everyone loves V-Dosc. Rarely will you find a rider nowadays that doesn't openly embrace it."

Aside from the Main Stage, L-Acoustics loudspeakers made a prominent showing at three other Coachella stages, including the Outdoor Theatre (18 V-Dosc, six dV-Dosc and 24 SB218 subs), Mojave Stage (16 Kudo), and Sahara Stage (40 V-Dosc and 24 dV-Dosc). These same systems were then used a week later for the country music-oriented Stagecoach Festival, similarly put on by Goldenvoice.