What better way to spend NYE than to be surrounded by Namibian Dunes, Chauvet Professional, Allen & Heath, ChamSys and Martin Audio.

Hosted on the 31^st of December, described as a high-energy music festival in the dunes, camping under the stars and around the dunes on New Year’s Eve, CampOut Dune Festival hosted world-renowned artists such as Kitty Amor, Ryan Murgatroyd, Dobe, Sandman and many others. The setup included products from ChamSys, Chauvet Professional, Martin Audio & Allen & Heath

ChamSys MQ70 was the choice for lighting control. The console features a 10.1” Multi-touch display, with an illuminated encoder and fader tracks. It supports 24 universes with an option to expand to 48 using Art-Net protocol, it also includes WIFI inbuilt to the console for quick connection to the ChamSys MagicQ Remote focus application without the need for external networking hardware. This was used to control the Chauvet Professional fixtures through Art-Net.

For lighting, the choice was Chauvet Professional fixtures, controlled through Chauvet Professional Net-XII Art-Net. They used 2 Colorado PXL Curve 12s, which is a fully pixel-mappable motorized IP65-rated RGBW LED batten with individual control of zoom, tilt and colour across the independent heads. They were complimented by two of the Chauvet Professional Vesuvio II. These touring-grade smoke machines illuminate bursts of fog with advanced RGBA+UV LED colour mixing, providing ferocious effects for events and performances.  Two Chauvet Professional Maverick MK Pyxis moving heads completed the look with their distinctive ring of nine 15W RGBW LEDs with a zoom range of 4.9° to 58.4° and built-in colour macros and gobos, as well as a punchy 60 W RGBW LED serving as a centre pixel with a 3° beam angle the Pyxis pack a striking visual look.

The Plug & Play team deployed 24 boxes of Martin Audio’s WPC line array for audio. A 12-a-side hang partnered up with 12 Martin Audio SXH218 subs facing forward. The WPC box is a 3-way bi-amped compact line array housing 2 x 10” drivers in a Hybrid configuration which marries the benefits of both horn and reflex loading.  Each driver is slot-loaded into a short horn to give a high sensitivity, while the rear of the driver is reflex-loaded to extend the LF output. Mid and HF horns are physically separate in the box — a key factor in the WPC’s exemplary 100° horizontal constant directivity dispersion pattern. With a peak SPL of 135dB the high-efficiency acoustic design can equal or outperform larger, direct radiator systems. This entire configuration was driven by 3 x Martin Audio Amp Racks housing nine iK42s for the main PA with an additional 2 to handle the monitoring.  Each iK42 4-channel amplifier can deliver up to 20,000 watts of power.

The team decided on 4 of Martin Audio Torus T1215s. These 12” Passive, 15-degree Fixed Angle Constant Curvature Array Loudspeakers have a single 12” (300mm) LF driver with three 1.4” (35mm)/1” (25mm) exit HF drivers, delivering a maximum SPL of 128dB continuous, with a 134 dB peak. An additional 2 Torus T1215 for front fill were deployed. All this was reinforced with 2 of the Martin Audio SX218 Subs, which are dual 18″ Passive Direct Radiating Subwoofers. These touring grade subs feature 4” (100mm) voice coils on the dual drivers. The waterproof cones offer a Maximum SPL of 144dB. This entire monitor configuration was run on two of Martin Audio iK42s power amplifiers.

The Allen & Heath SQ7 was chosen for FOH. The largest surface in the SQ range, the SQ7 features 32 (+1) faders with 6 layers, a high-res 7” touchscreen, 48 input channels, 16-line outputs, 16 assignable Softkeys, and 8 assignable rotaries. The SQ7 is powered by Allen & Heath’s XCVI 96kHz FPGA engine which delivers an insanely low latency of 0.7ms. The SQ-7 was paired up with the Allen & Heath GX4816 expander which continues the 96kHz operation chain and is loaded with 48 dLive mic preamps each with independent Phantom Power LED indicators, plus 16 XLR line outputs. Additionally, 2 DX ports are provided for connection to up to 4 DX Expanders for further I/O expansion.

Special thanks to the Plug & Play Events Solutions