Wide Awake: The Funktion One Art Car [Update]

funktion1 mega stackSpeaker company Funktion-One is responsible for much of the clean, crisp, and very, very loud sound you hear at Burning Man. I’m a fan, along with Martin Audio, and B & W (for home).

They recently built a system for Wide Awake, the camp of EDM mega-promoter and Insomniac founder Pasquale Rotella.

A Burner alerted me to this story posted on Funktion-One’s Web Site, saying it is an example of Commodification – trying to use Burning Man to sell a commercial product. What do you think, Burners?

Screenshot 2015-04-30 15.32.30

[Source: Funktion-One]

[Update 5/1/15 9:26am]

There’s more, also on the Funktion-One web site:

Screenshot 2015-05-01 09.25.03

Screenshot 2015-05-01 09.25.30

“Funktion-One enjoys an affinifty with Burning Man’s volition”…what does that even mean? The “burningman.com” at the end makes it look officially sanctioned.

 

wide awake car

Image: The Scene Is Dead

wide awake art car

insomniac art car

 

The art car also uses a Powersoft Digimod amplifier system.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Image: Zio Giorgio

 

The mobile PA consisted of custom left and right Funktion One loudspeaker stacks mounted on individual carts. Each of the stacks were powered by Powersoft DigiMod 3000PFC amplifier modules sealed in custom designed “closets” bolted to the subwoofer stacks. The two stack carts were pushed and pulled in front of and behind the car with the generator cart tagging along at the end.  The car itself was built upon a 16-foot dual axle truck equipped with a custom DJ booth and VIP seating for at least 40 people. The VIP area was covered by its own Funktion One loudspeaker system, powered by a third Powersoft amplifier module closet.

“The idea was that they could unhitch and position the loudspeaker stacks to the left and right of the car and have a high-end electronic dance party happening anywhere,” Konecny adds. “We even designed the main system to work on a stand-alone basis so that they could leave the main PA up and running and take the car to cruise around the playa.”

Each of the main stacks consisted of three Funktion One F221 double 21-inch subwoofers and four custom Funktion One 10-inch and 1-inch mid/high loudspeakers configured to sit on the subwoofer stack.

Each cart amplifier closet held seven DigiMod 3000PFC modules. Six of the modules running in bridge configuration powered the six 21″ subwoofers drivers, providing approximately 3,400 watts to each driver. The seventh amp module drove the mid/high 10-inch drivers on one channel and the 1-inch drivers on the other.

Each of the closets had the air intake exhaust filtered using a high performance automobile filter. The air output was filtered to prevent dust from the playa from getting in and contaminating the closet when the blower was not running. The blowers themselves were on thermostats so that they were exchanging air only when the interior temps were high, keeping the amount of dust that the filters have to deal with to a minimum. For convenience, the filters were washable in the field so that they could stay clean.  The closets were equipped with a single twist lock power connection providing three phases of 30A service.

“The DigiMod modules were run on two legs of the three phase service, so they were running at 208Vac,” adds Konecny. “Since there were six modules running identical low end programming, this approximated a fairly balanced load to the power connection.”

Konecny continues, “In order to be prepared for any scenario we designed the closets so that individual modules could be replaced through the front panel without powering down the system.  Fortunately the need never arose, the Powersoft modules were terrific.”

The car itself was equipped with an additional F221 subwoofer  and two Function One AX88 mid-high loudspeakers. The third amplifier closet, loaded with six DigiMod 3000PFC modules, powered this system.  The Insomniac art car was a non-stop mobile fixture of entertainment throughout the Burning Man festival. Aptly titled the Insomniac “Wide Awake” car, it garnered “Best in Show” for art cars at the event.  Since then it continues to offer a full lineup of local artists and special guests during various events hosted by Insomniac in the greater Los Angeles area.

info: www.powersoft-audio.com

This is a story promoting the use of Powersoft’s products, but unlike with the Funktion-Ones, it’s not at Powersoft’s web site, it’s at ZioGiorgio:

ZIOGIORGIO is the first real multilingual world network for information about professional entertainment. The only real tool that allows professionals to get timely information on events and technical news of the sector all over the world.

ZIOGIORGIO network essentially consists of ten sites linked to one another and created by separate editorial offices for each language spoken in the countries where the network is present.

How does it compare to this Fest300 Burning Man-related advertorial?

fest300 safety tips burningman-shorter

 

What do you think? OK? Not OK? OK but not for a Director sworn to represent the Ten Principles? Or OK for BMOrg elites but not for regular Burners?

Behind The Scenes At A Sound Camp

MC2 Audio has a story about what goes into the sound at Ooligan Alley. It’s heavy on technical details, which will be interesting to some readers. A team from the UK brought out a serious system, featuring 12 Funktion1 speakers and 12 subwoofers power by MC2 amps and XTA processors. The DJ booth was the cockpit of a Boeing 737, and they kept the audio equipment in an air-conditioned Hexayurt. Even the DJ’s monitor speakers were Funktion1’s!

In case you don’t know, a setup like this is expensive – hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of kit. And I bet it sounded ridiculously good. Thanks Ooligan Alley, and everyone involved in gifting this level of sound experience to Burners.

Here are some of the sets played through this setup:

A Hundred Drums

DJ Professor Stone: “The Great Plane Throbbery”

DJ Vitor Friday Morning Sunrise

 


 

re-blogged from MC2 Audio:

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The ephemeral Black Rock City, a place that exists only for the length of the spectacular Burning Man festival of counter-culture, music and arts is a gruelling test of endurance for both man and machine alike.

Taking place in the middle of the Nevada desert, where the temperature regularly reaches well over 40 degrees in the day and can plummet to below zero under the clear skies at night, you need to be a special kind of animal to adapt and survive in these conditions.  With dust storms whipping up every few hours out of nowhere, it takes the community spirit and a love of all things avant garde to get the best from what some see as one of the most “out there” global events in the world.

Yet, despite the challenging conditions, over 60,000 participants are drawn to the desert location each year to take part in over a week of 24 hour exploration –  of each other, of arts events, of music, dancing and parties, and testing individual limits of self-expression and self-reliance.

Whilst part of the ethos of Burning Man is to create “Black Rock City” out of nothing each year and, when the festival ends, return the desert site back to whence it came leaving no traces of humans even having been there, whilst the festival is in full swing, facilities must be created and basic needs met.
14bm jumbofrontMusic is integral to the backbone of the entire experience, with performances spanning individual acts of self-expression up to full-on dance music systems of the slightly more traditional form, as you might see at Glastonbury.  This is where our story starts, with a British company shipping out to be part of the “Ooligan Alley” project, equipping and manning music and dance events at Burning Man.

Oz Jeffries, from pro-audio specialists Audio Feed based on the south coast of England, takes up the story for us:

“Having been to Burning Man 3 times before, I was excited to take part on the Ooligan Alley project, but I knew the challenge ahead. Black Rock City is the ultimate test of survival, endurance and self-reliance on us, and therefore on all of the equipment out there in that environment for 10 days.”

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Audio Feed supplied a huge Funktion One speaker system for the event, which was exclusively powered by MC2 amplifiers and XTA processing.  Twelve F1 Res4Ts and twelve F1 F221A subs made up the main PA.  Such a serious system demands a seriously cool look, and the focal point for the set-up was the Jumbo 737 airplane cockpit that had been cut in two to become the DJ booth.  Monitoring in the cockpit was via a pair of Res2s and F-121s.

Oz continues:

“We powered everything with 4 x MC2 E100, 4 x E25 and the XTA A6 amplifier modules [for the subs], all running through XTA 4 Series processing including 2 x DP448 and 1 x DP428  [same as DP448].

 

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I was very happy to be powering everything with XTA and MC2 equipment knowing their reliance, and we decided to use a sealed Hexiyurt to house the amplifier racks including the XTA A6 modules which we took out of the back of the bass cabinets to protect them from the dust as much as possible. We then ran 2 air conditioning units within that yurt to keep control of the temperature, all run from an isolated generator with an output of 230v to reduce the amperage. We wired each bass cabinet with 4 core cable to allow us to have independent control of each driver.

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Each single 4 Ohm Funktion One 21″ driver was run from a single MC2 channel E-100 channel, or a single A6 module channel, therefore giving the best output power with plenty of headroom. Running as a 7 way system we had full separate control of the top Resolution 4’s to cover the back of the arena, all controlled via our iPad using the DP4 remote app connected to the 4 series processors, this control is invaluable throughout the event for front of house control.”

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In case you haven’t heard of the A6 modules – a little bit of history:  The A6 modules were XTA’s first foray into the world of digital amplification and were a collaborative project with Funktion One, producing a 2 x 2.2kW amp with full DSP and remote control in a package not much bigger than a telephone book!  These modules were fitted to the back of the sub cabinets and could power an additional sub each.  There was also a smaller A4 module which was used with the Res2 speakers.

Oz was delighted with the results:

“All of the equipment performed outstandingly. After an 8000 mile journey across the Atlantic and a 4 hour truck drive out into the desert, within hours even with the best will in the world all the equipment was covered in dust, so a lot was expected of the moving parts and electronics. Being in a very desolate location for 10 days we had to rely on the equipment with only limited spares. No spares were needed, and even in the dust storms and 14 hour a day running times through 40 degree temperatures differences all the speakers and electronics blinked not once, and upon inspection afterwards we found no dust inside the amplifiers.”

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Burning Man shows no sign of burning itself out growing in size and popularity year upon year – a British rental company making a pilgrimage across the ocean with no speaker or electronic casualties shows just what a dedicated and professional a team of people work at Audio Feed.  Whether there were any human “casualties” due to party overload is something that will surely stay on the road!