Having achieved prominence though Britain’s Got Talent, English singer-songwriter Calum Scott recently performed to a capacity crowd at Zevenwacht Wine Estate in Cape Town as part of his Bridges album tour, supported by local artists Craig Lucas and Werner Bekker. The event, attended by 2,000 fans, was organised by Breakout Events with Ultra Events responsible for the technical systems.

‘Zevenwacht Wine Estate is an interesting venue, as the front row is at stage height and the back row rises to an elevation of 8m due to a natural slope,’ says Ultra Events owner, Costa Champanis. ‘The brief was to provide great sounding audio for all guests, from the front row to the row.’

Ultra specified a full d&b audiotechnik system comprising 12 d&b V8 mid-high loudspeakers, with four V12 flown in LR arrays of eight elements per side, supplemented by 12 B22 subwoofers as a spaced CSA array. d&b M4 loudspeakers were used for as front fill and monitors, with the whole system driven by d&b D80 power amplifiers. System design was by Ultra Events Audio HOD, Patrick Dudgeon.

‘On the day, we did not have enough time to do a site inspection and had to quickly revise the stage position due to weather and increased ticket sales,’ Dudgeon says. ‘We needed to redefine the parameters on set-up day. There were also noise restrictions at the venue with residential areas close by, but we could easily verify the array and subwoofer positions with the R1 software at low volume. Inclement weather disrupted our ability to properly tune the system, but by defining the venue layout, as well as the prediction of the system response and relative delay times, it allowed us to open up a PA system that was close to perfect.’

‘We have been d&b partners for around five years now,’ explains Costa. ‘Across various venues and use cases, our d&b system has consistently demonstrated outstanding performance, reliability and versatility.’

With the weather finally clearing, the Ultra team were ready to hand over to the artists’ sound engineers to kick off the event. ‘After only a few minutes of tuning, we were ready to hand the PA over to Calum Scott’s sound engineer for him to create his magic – he was suitably impressed,’ Dudgeon concludes. ‘The venue was filled to capacity and the system performed beautifully, while the crowd enjoyed a memorable evening.’