The Rundown
Topics: Outdoor Events, Sound Systems | 4 min read
A great outdoor sound system can make an event unforgettable. A poor one is the thing everybody remembers for the wrong reason.
Premier Live regularly supplies systems for outdoor events of every scale - large music festivals, high-profile conferences, bespoke one-off shows.
Outdoors is a fundamentally different problem to indoors. Inside a venue the walls and ceiling contain and direct sound for you. Outside those boundaries disappear, and sound simply travels away into the air.
Here is what changes when you take an event outside, the equipment that handles it, and the noise considerations that come first.
Noise Pollution
Deal With This First
Before any technical discussion, there is noise pollution.
However good the event is, if the sound is a nuisance to people who are not attending, it becomes a problem - and one that can shut a show down.
Where It Bites Hardest
Built-up areas, sites near residential property, and locations close to other events are the difficult cases.
Every one of those will have conditions attached to the licence, and those conditions are measured at a boundary rather than at the mixing desk.
How It Is Managed
We always consider the impact a system will have on the surrounding area, and technicians use a range of techniques and equipment to make sure sound goes where it is meant to go.
Directional control is the main tool. A system that can be shaped puts energy on the audience and keeps it off the boundary, which is usually what the licence actually requires.
Plan It Early
Noise limits shape the system design, the stage orientation and sometimes the site layout itself.
Discovering the limit after the design is fixed is how events end up running quieter than the audience expects. Bring it into the conversation at the start.
Bringing the Indoors Out
What You Lose
Inside a designed venue, controlling sound is comparatively straightforward. Walls and ceilings contain and direct it.
Take the event outside and those surfaces are gone. Sound disperses into open air, and level drops away far faster with distance than most people expect.
Line Array Speakers
Ideal for outdoor work. Multiple cabinets stack together to project sound over long distances while maintaining clarity and even coverage.
They are the professional standard for large outdoor events precisely because their coverage can be shaped - which solves the throw problem and the noise problem simultaneously.
Subwoofers
A good outdoor system needs more than mid and high frequencies. Subwoofers provide the bass foundation and the physical, immersive feel that music outdoors otherwise lacks.
Low frequency also travels furthest and is the hardest to contain, so subwoofer placement is usually where noise management is won or lost.
Amplifiers and Processing
The equipment behind the scenes that makes everything work, and where fine-tuning happens.
Cabling and Infrastructure
Outdoor setups bring longer cable runs and the need to protect everything from weather. That infrastructure needs designing rather than improvising on site.
Hire and Support
Dry Hire
Premier Live provides dry hire of sound systems for outdoor events.
The range covers small outdoor PA systems for garden parties and modest gatherings, right through to large-scale festival rigs.
All equipment is rigorously tested before and after every hire, so it performs as expected.
Optional Support
Delivery, setup and technical support are available alongside the hire.
For anything beyond a straightforward PA, that support is worth taking. Outdoor systems are less forgiving than indoor ones, and there is no room in the room to hide a mistake.
Weather
Everything outdoors needs a weather plan. Speakers, amplifiers, cabling and control positions all need covering, and the covering itself needs to survive wind.
Check IP ratings on anything staying out overnight, and plan for the site being wet during derig even if the show itself stays dry.
Not Sure What You Need?
If you are unsure what your event requires, our team can work through the specifics with you and put together a package suited to the site rather than to a price list.
Hosting outdoors does not mean compromising on sound. With the right people and equipment, an outdoor event can sound genuinely memorable.
Give Premier Live a call on 0116 202 9953 or email info@premier-ltd.com.
Tell us about your event.
Fill in the form and we'll come back to you quickly, not with a generic auto-reply, but with something useful.
Prefer a call? Book a 20-minute discovery call at a time that suits you.
Rather email? info@premier-ltd.com. Or just ring us: 0116 202 9953.
Once we hear from you, we'll set up a quick call to understand your brief properly, no lengthy questionnaires, no sales pitch.
We typically respond within two hours on working days.
EXPERIENCED. DEPENDABLE. HANDS-ON. UNFLAPPABLE
The people behind the production.
These are our people - the production managers, technicians, show-callers and crew who plan your event and run the room on the night. The same team from first site visit to final cue.
What We've Been Up To.
A look at the events we've delivered, the brief, the build, and how it ran on the night. Worth a read.
