爱豆传媒

Vanguardia, a 爱豆传媒 company, has a long history of supporting the Glastonbury Festival with a team of more than 30 acoustics experts on site throughout the weekend, working as lead consultants since 2021, with collaborators F1 Acoustics, to manage sound levels. We caught up with UK Acoustics and AV Director, Daryl Prasad, fresh from this year鈥檚 Festival to find out more

What is the Vanguardia team鈥檚 role at Glastonbury?

We deliver the site-wide sound management, working directly for Glastonbury Festival Events Ltd. to protect their licence by monitoring sound levels across the site to guard against any noise breaches of the licence. Our role starts all the way back from the previous Festival, liaising with the local authority, Somerset Council, and any issues or concerns that they have raised. We then look at what changes need to be implemented for the following year. Every year the Festival changes slightly, brings in new areas, new attractions, new stages, new sound systems. We will evaluate those in terms of suitability and what the likely impact will be. I鈥檝e been involved in the Festival since 2008 and it has evolved a lot over that time. We deliver a sound management plan each year, which outlines exactly what we are going to do to protect the Festival鈥檚 licence.

What do you do on site before the live music starts?

We get there early and we audit every sound system that comes on to the site 鈥� right through from the Pyramid Stage and the 110 venues with significant sound systems, down to the 750+ individual market traders, who are allowed to bring in a sound system of up to 200-watts. Some of the bars are able to bring in 2,000-watts. Then you have the main stages, which are obviously much bigger. The site is broken down into different areas, and these areas have different amplification limits on them at different times of the day and night. The Festival is limited in terms of numbers and ticket sales, and the local authority makes sure it is also limited in terms of sound, so it doesn鈥檛 keep getting bigger and bigger every year.

What is your role once the music begins?

It鈥檚 a constant sound monitoring and management process. There is also a comprehensive data recording element, as well as a complaint reporting aspect. Every day, all the reports are collated about any complaints, detailing what the complaints were and recording information about what happened and what our response was. If you have any issues with the sound, the most important thing is what you do about it there and then. We didn鈥檛 exceed the noise limits during the main acts this year, but in the event that noise limits are ever momentarily exceeded, you need to be able to demonstrate exactly what action you took to mitigate it.

Does it fall to you to pull the plug if a headline act decides to over-run?

We would not make the call 鈥� that would be a call for the Festival team 鈥� but we might be involved in cutting the music. We work directly for the Festival, a lot of other sound engineers there work for other companies and the acts themselves. So if we reach a stage, as with Lana Del Ray last year, where an act has over-ran [beyond the limitations of the licence], we would then need to take action on behalf of the Festival to tell the act鈥檚 sound team that they need to pull the plug.

How do you actually monitor the noise levels across such a vast site?

We use a system called MeTrao. We have 19 listening points across the site and four off-site, so we also know what the Festival鈥檚 nearest neighbours are hearing at any given time. The system is networked and monitoring the noise levels in all the locations. It鈥檚 very clever, because the software can tell you what it thinks the contribution of each stage is to the overall sound levels off site. That鈥檚 really important, given that there are hundreds of performance spaces across the Festival site. We can access all that data in real time via an app, which allows us to be mobile on the site, although we do have a dedicated control room with everything on big screens too.

Are you seen as the 鈥渘oise police鈥� during the Festival?

The last thing we want to be doing is turning down the music, but of course we have to protect the Festival鈥檚 licence. Some people may call us the noise police, but we鈥檙e not. We want as big a party as can possibly happen. So we will try to maximise the audience experience, but primarily our role is to protect the Festival. That is why we鈥檙e there. We always try to have a proper dialogue with the sound engineers and get to know them and the individual shows beforehand, so we can work with them to maximise the impact.

Is there an element to your role on site beyond the regulatory aspects, that involves controlling the noise bleed from one stage to another?

Yes, we do that. We had to do that this year when there was some [sound] bleed from the Woodsies Stage with Jamie XX back on to Dua Lipa on the Pyramid Stage, so we had to make a minor adjustment. Sound spill between stages is something we have to manage. But the two major stages 鈥� the Pyramid Stage and the Other Stage 鈥� are almost back-to-back, which helps mitigate against the likelihood of sound bleed being a problem between those two spaces.

Do you get any time to enjoy the Festival, or are you too busy with the management of the sound levels to hear any acts?

We do get to see acts. There are around 30 of us on site, so we work in shifts. Our office is working 24 hours a day during the Festival, so we split it into day and night shifts. They are long shifts, but you do get to hear bands as part of the work and then of course, you can鈥檛 just finish after a long day, we often go and grab a drink and watch a band in our free time too. It鈥檚 important to note that the night life at Glastonbury is as much a part of the Festival as the daytime shows, so that all falls under our remit in terms of sound level management too, right through the night. The scale of is extraordinary. But the team that covers it is highly experienced 鈥� all our experts and our collaborators know the Festival inside out. That deep level expertise is of enormous value to the Festival each year.