Concluding the India leg of his P-Pop Culture Tour Karan Aujla is among the most popular artists in the Punjabi-speaking music world as well as featuring in the UK Asian chart and Global YouTube music charts. The tour had seen him play in eight cities and set a new benchmark for live music in India at its opening in New Delhi in February, with the largest deployment of d&b audiotechnik inventory in the country to date.
Given the task of making this show heard for the 75,000 audience in Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium was FOH sound engineer O’Necean Gordon.
‘With a crowd of this size, it’s important to make sure the experience translates everywhere, and is consistent from show to show,’ he says. ‘I like to keep things clean and controlled, especially in the low end, so that it doesn’t become uneven across different zones. My approach was to really trust the system design and then mix into that.’
Gigging to mark the released of his third studio album P-Pop Culture, he was supported on the tour by rental company Hertz & Pixels and d&b’s regional partner Ansata. The PA system consisted largely of SL-Series boxes that, with itsfull-bandwidth directivity and cardioid performance, provided the controlled and consistent output needed to keep the ‘clean and controlled’ sound that O’Necean sought. It saw 32 GSL cabinets making up the main system, supported by 20 flown SL-Subs and 52 floor-standing SL-GSubs, with more SL-Series – 96 KSL cabinets in total – providing ou tfills and delays.
The system also included 16 AL90 augmented array boxes as front fill and 12 V-Series as 270˚ stacked fill. The system, with the exception of the subs and fills, was optimised with d&b’s ArrayProcessing.
Neil Lean, Education and Application Support at d&b audiotechnik EMEA supported Hertz & Pixels and Ansata with the system design: ‘The goal in designing a system for a stadium isn’t only how loud can it go but how even can the coverage be and what’s the best intelligibility that can be achieved?’ he says. ‘The challenge is to do this at a level that can be heard above the noise of 75,000-plus excited audience members.
‘d&b’s ArrayProcessing makes it easy to achieve consistent overlap between the mains, out-fills, delays and fills,’ he continues. ‘That accuracy helped immensely with the evolution of the design, from the planning phase to deployment.
‘A system like d&b gives a solid foundation before you even touch the console. The clarity and headroom mean you’re not fighting the PA, you’re working with it. That lets you focus more on the musicality of the mix rather than problem-solving. What stood out was how predictable everything felt. When I made a move, it translated the way I expected it to. That kind of consistency builds a lot of confidence, especially in a fast paced, high-pressure environment.
‘The support was top tier,’ says O’Necean. ‘Ansata and d&b understood the assignment – that it’s not just about having great gear, it’s also about execution. Everything was dialed in, and communication was smooth throughout. Knowing those competent individuals were there made it very easy to focus on delivering. That kind of support makes a huge difference, especially on a production of this scale.’
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