The Notting Hill carnival is not somewhere to go if you have a hangover. With over a million visitors, 40 static sound systems and a fleet of beat-blasting floats, the sounds of the annual event, held over 20 miles in London’s Notting Hill, is an auditory nightmare to someone with a headache. However, visiting the carnival as a fresh-faced and rested punter is an experience like no other.

Carnival has been held every August bank holiday since 1966. Originally started by the West Indian community in the area, the annual event now draws crowds from all over the world for two days of street party madness. The colourful floats, ethnic foods and block-rocking beats from endless stacks of speakers strewn about the neighbourhood are signature to the festival and serve as a showcase of loudspeaker technology in an unorthodox outdoor setting. 
 
Among this year’s floats was a line array stack from LD System’s new Premium line of line-array loudspeaker technology. The system was assembled on the back of an 18-wheeler and comprised 16 of LD’s VA-8 line array elements and eight LD VAPS-215 subs.

Having only landed in the UK two weeks prior, Carnival was the UK debut of the system. LD Systems product manager Ben Millson and Dave Brown from the company’s UK distributor, Adam Hall, manned the trucks to ensure premium output of the system throughout the weekend.

Millson comments: “All we had was three rack cases and a stack of arrays and subs, which is minimal compared to what some of the other trucks were using and we were getting complaints that we were interfering with the sound up to four floats behind us. The design of the Premium system is very efficient. The VA-8 is not big, but coupling them with the 215s’ double 15-full band bass enclosures delivers a big sound. We only used one column up the middle of the set-up, but it provided a 100-degree dispersion so we didn’t need to use two per side. Some of the bigger names on the market come with much heftier price tags than LD Premium, but it can deliver just as much in terms of coverage, SPLs and throw.”
 
The LD Premium VA-8 is a dual two-way line array speaker with two eight-inch Neodymium woofers and two one-inch Neodynium compression drivers with a 1.35-inch voice coil. With a 100 by ten-degree rotatable dispersion, its frequency range is 70Hz to 19kHz. The speaker also provides 138dB max SPL and weighs 27.5kg.

The accompanying LD VAPS-215 is a dual 15-inch fourth order bandpass sub with 1,200W RMS, featuring two woofers with four-inch voice coil delivering a 34 to 400Hz frequency range. A max SPL of 131dB, the VAPS-215 is 740mm wide, 506mm high and 705mm deep and weighs 81.5 kgs.

The system was accompanied by LD’s LDSP6K amplifiers for low end, set at two Ohms, which provided 2,950Watts per channel and a frequency range of 20Hz to 20kHz. The VA-8 was powered by LDSDP4K amplifiers. Both amps are Class H and are listed as providing optimum audio at low distortion in the range of 1.5 to six kilowatts, yet weighing in around eight kilos and 30cm deep.

System designer Robbie Barrow is no stranger to big systems as he has used many other loudspeakers for past carnival floats. He was very happy with the Premium speakers over the weekend. Millson explains: “I invited Barrow down to our offices to hear a demo of the new speakers and he was very impressed. So much so that he immediately chose to use them for Carnvial. He has used some really high-end stuff in the past, so we were very happy at how pleased he was with the new Premium line.”
www.ld-premium.com