Kevin saunderson

Saunderson offered, "Music is technically defined as the art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition. Logical represents reasoning in a clear and consistent manner.In that light, MusicLogical has been created to fuse and celebrate music's finest role - to bring people together and remove all bias." Under the direction of Detroit Techno founding father Kevin Saunderson, MusicLogical is committed to building on the integrity and legacy of Detroit music, furthering the progress of Electronic Music as a genre.

As Festival Producer, Saunderson put together a core team of professionals to carry out this vision. New Festival Director, Ade' Mainor, presently the President and Chief Operating Officer of Submerge, a globally-celebrated Detroit record label and production company, delivered a world class festival like no other.

Formally continuing his ground-shaking efforts from last year's show is Olof van Winden, Chairman of The Generator Foundation, a European group which profiles itself in Art, Music and Technology. Van Winden served this year as the official International Festival Director, assisting with foreign sponsorship, artist related services, tourism board and ministry of culture throughout Europe. Perhaps one of Olof's most crucial roles has been to introduce renowned loudspeaker company, Funktion One from the UK, to the festival.

Last year through Chicago based rental and contracting company Sound Investment, at Olof's behest, Funktion One showcased their sounds at the Fuse-In Detroit Underground Stage. Director Kevin Saunderson was so impressed by the sound on this stage, he asked the Sound Investment / Funktion One team to come back and deliver their sounds to all four stages at this year's festival. "I was so enthralled by their sound," said Saunderson. " I had to have them involved again."

Funktion One has earned an enviable reputation for its unconventional, uncompromising loudspeaker system designs. Their design ethic places ultimate importance on sonic accuracy particularly in terms of lack of distortion and delivery of astonishing transient fidelity. Funktion One is the brainchild of sound gurus Tony Andrews and John Newsham. Tony comments: "Our objective is to provide loudspeaker systems capable of delivering sound quality that given the right music can provide a transcendent experience for all involved."

Olof van Winden met with Funktion One in Germany earlier this year and a strong sense of common ground was quickly established between them, ultimately leading to the company's central involvement. Funktion One's David Bruml and Emma Newton from the UK were in attendance for the duration of the festival working closely in conjunction with their main US representatives Sound Investment throughout, to ensure that the sound lived up to its promise.

Sound Investment has a legacy of working with electronic music through its national installation and system design division. "We have provided systems for nightclubs throughout the US and abroad working closely with top name talent and know the demands put on a system by electronic music," explains Sound Investment director Daniel Agne.

Bruml commented: "It was a pleasure to work with the production team in Detroit - the spirit of the festival was truly refreshing, ranging from Kevin and Olof's clear desire to provide their audience with deep and memorable experiences all the way through to the fantastic attitude of the Sound Investment crew and site manager Steve Filkins and the passion of people like Jason and Sam from Paxahau involved with the Underground stage."

The events roster of national and international talent ranges from DJ's to groups with five synthesizers, two conga players, a drummer, guitars and a DJ plus vocalists. This year's event also featured a significant number of hip hop artists and acts including closing night headliner Mos Def. "Electronic music has a much wider frequency and dynamic range than that of a traditional band, but at the same time the sound system has to be capable of reproducing a traditional band, Resolution excels at both" explains Dean McNaughton, director of Sound Investment.

Three of the four stages utilized complete Funktion One Resolution systems with various combinations of the Resolution 4 (40 degree) and Resolution 5 (higher intensity 20 degree) mid high touring enclosures combined with Resolution 18 and F218 bass enclosures. DJ monitoring on all stages was provided by the Resolution 2 full range fully horn loaded enclosure.

Perhaps the best summary of the sound came independently from Brian McCollum writing in The Detroit Free Press: "A high end Funktion One system delivered crisp textured sound… …slinky bass lines deftly meshed with thick bottom ends in ways we've never heard at the concrete plaza."…

SYSTEMS.
With the main stage set high above an expansive bowl, the primary challenge in coverage was the floor of the bowl itself, which became a massive dance floor. After considering several rigging and stacking scenarios, The Sound Investment / Funktion One team ultimately decided on a combination of carefully configured flown point source clusters incorporating four wide, two deep Resolution 5 mid-high enclosures with four R4D Downfills per side. These were used in conjunction with ground stacked F218 bass with an additional self powered F218 bass stack in the pit for the requisite heart pounding low end. The clusters provided smooth coverage for the bowl and the system design struck a good balance between the objectives of creating a large and detailed festival sound stage with body shaking precise bass for the dancers.

To bolster the impact and provide a reference for the main stage jumbo screen, a delayed, ground-stacked Funktion One Resolution 5 / F218 system was also added to the rear of the mix position firing onto the Plaza's common areas.

Main Stage R5/R4D cluster

The second stage, known as The Pyramid Stage was challenging due to its concrete wedge shape with a sunken stage and steeply raked seating - the ability to physically tailor Funktion One system deployment to the required audience shape had the huge advantage of concentrating acoustic energy on the crowd but minimizing wall reflections (in stark contrast to the fixed horizontal dispersion limitations of line array systems). This approach of focusing the sound on the people was used to positive effect in all of the acoustically challenging stages.

The third stage known as the MusicLogical Stage was a large tent under the direction of The Generator Foundation and provided some exceptional moments, possibly never better than the set of Alexander Robotnick on Sunday night. It benefited from a four point Resolution 4 / F218 system.

The Underground Stage also proved an acoustically challenging environment with a low concrete ceiling, concrete walls and sunken floor. This stage utilized Floodlight (an earlier Andrews' speaker design) at the front supplemented by a phenomenal Resolution 4 and 18 rear fill for the jaw dropping final set by Richie Hawtin on the final night.

Main Stage

Pyramid Stage

The rear of main stage VIP enclosure saw the American debut of F1's new small box - the Resolution 1. This amazing loudspeaker epitomizes everything that Tony Andrews has been pioneering over so many years of research, finally banishing compression drivers with their inherent harshness altogether. (In the Resolution 2, 4 and 5 used elsewhere, compression drivers are never used below 5k7Hz for this reason). Funktion One claim that the R1 enclosure with its completely new 5" cone loudspeaker loaded onto a miniaturized Axhead and waveguide is set to revolutionize the 12" + horn speaker market and in keeping with all of their systems uses no system EQ whatsoever.

Overall, the festival represented one of the largest assemblages of touring Resolution loudspeakers for a U.S. event to date. "We had our entire Funktion One Resolution inventory at the festival and still had additional main stage equipment and support from Tennessee-based CTS Audio," adds Sound Investment Director, Peter Vanek.

FOH and monitor consoles for the main stage were Yamaha PM5D's with a combination of Midas, Crest and Soundcraft consoles for FOH and monitor on the other three. Processing included XTA and Funktion One for main and delay loudspeakers while monitor processing was via DBX and Klark Teknik. Amplification was a combination of Funktion One self powered (PWM), MC2, Lab Gruppen, QSC Powerlight and Crest.

According to Vanek and McNaughton, the PM5D was a godsend in dealing with the frequent set changes. "Having all of the tools right there on the console such as compressors and gates was a major time saver rather than in a rack," adds McNaughton. The main stage saw as many as 40 inputs with most acts on all stages ranging from 2 to 24 inputs. Monitors ranged from one to fourteen mixes with side fills preferred by the DJ's, wedges for instrumentalist and several acts on in-ear monitors. "There were lots of Roland 303's 808's and 909's, which are really backbones of electronic music and dance", Vanek continued.

Main stage change-overs were handled predominantly by David Bruml and the CTS crew from Nashville - a combination that clearly worked well with CTS taking responsibility for the band changeovers and Bruml handling the majority of DJ equipment set-ups. Funktion One clearly place great importance on Signal Path Integrity and have become highly frustrated by the lack of good sounding (so called) 'professional' DJ mixers. So much so, that they have been moved to develop a new DJ mixer (the FF6000) in conjunction with UK manufacturer Formula Sound in which they place equal importance on the DJ interface and sound quality. This mixer was used to good effect by a high proportion of the DJs on the Main and Musicological stages.

Another new and good sounding mixer, the Foundation, designed by Todd Koencey of Order Of Magnitude was sporadically deployed on the Pyramid Stage. Bruml adds "Resolutiuon systems are highly revealing, and compressed MP3s, poor quality sound cards or mixers of dubious quality can dramatically undermine our quest to deliver exceptional audio. We were generally pleased with the open minded response that we found from talking such issues through with the DJs at the event. The individual DJ set-ups had a big effect on how they sounded out front".

David Bruml with Dean McNaughton

For the most part the weather was cooperative and by all accounts the festival was an overwhelming success, ensuring a fifth and even better year. One thing that the sound providers and festival organizers know is what the artists and lovers of all forms of electronic and dance music have understood for years. That is the connection between the body and the music.

"An important aspect of this type of event is that the people want to feel the music as well as hear it, but in an outdoor environment made of concrete, that becomes more difficult," explains Vanek. "But I think we're at the crossroads of a shift in our industry where attaining true high fidelity and low harmonic distortion at high SPLs is becoming more important than the hype of typical mainstream manufacturers, so people can choose the systems that are right rather than those that are simply the flavor of the month."

David Bruml concludes by saying: "Delivering low distortion sound with high physical involvement allows people to have a great time with music whilst looking after their hearing".