USA - The Coachella Festival’s Do LaB electronic music stage beat stronger than ever this year, thanks to a new open-air stage design featuring a Meyer Sound Panther large-format linear line array loudspeaker system.
Since 2005, Do LaB, created by brothers Dede, Jesse, and Josh Flemming, has brought elements of underground culture, spontaneity, and community-driven experiences to Coachella, drawing on its founders’ roots in Southern California’s festival and art scene to provide a prime destination for festivalgoers and headlining artists alike.
At this year’s festival, which took over Indio, CA’s Empire Polo Club on the weekends of 11-13 and 19–21April, Do LaB hosted nonstop performances from the likes of Chase & Status, Alesso, Anna Lunoe, and DJ Tennis, plus surprise appearances including back-to-back sets by Kaskade and Alison Wonderland and an impromptu party hosted by Billie Eilish.
Do LaB’s MACROdose stage, new for Coachella 2024, is a bold departure from the tent designs of recent years. An open-air enchanted forest of music and lights nestled under a canopy of vibrant, mushroom-like fabric sculptures, it embodies the essence of the Do LaB ethos - freedom, discovery, and expression.
“MACROdose was a return to our roots of building stand-alone structures that create an immersive environment,” says Do LaB co-founder Jesse Flemming, who designed the experience. “This also gave the opportunity for the crowd to expand much farther than in years past, and we saw some of our biggest audiences ever.”
MACROdose’s open design and intricate structural elements required a low-profile sound system that could deliver the necessary power to cover the expanded audience zone, which extended 300ft from the stage. “We were going for our best options for the position of the PA and how much weight the designers should calculate for in their engineering,” explains audio crew chief and systems engineer Ian Ingram, who serves many roles at Do LaB, from designing and proving the sound system to mixing FOH. “It’s not like a big tent, it’s not like an arena.”
Meyer Sound’s Josh Dorn-Fehrmann worked with Ingram to design a system centered around Panther and the 2100‑LFC low-frequency control element. “Because it’s EDM, because it’s really fast drum and bass music, it was the perfect showcase for Panther and the 2100-LFC,” he says. “Those loudspeakers are incredibly fast. And, with Panther being so light and yet so powerful, we were able to really home in on getting nice angle sets and throwing over 300ft and making it really powerful so that the kids had a good show.”
The Do LaB sound system, provided by Los Angeles-based integrator Launch, comprised 10 Panther-L large-format linear array loudspeakers flown per side. Those were supplemented by four Panther-W front-fills and 18 2100-LFC low-frequency control elements configured in a gradient arc, which preserved bass impact while keeping low-frequency energy contained, preventing bleed to other stages.
Six flown Leopard compact linear line array loudspeakers per side served as delays. The team implemented an outer ring of ten ULTRA‑X40 compact loudspeakers as lateral surrounds, in a configuration recommended by Meyer Sound’s senior technical support specialist David Vincent. The entire system ran on a Milan AVB network and was controlled by Galileo Galaxy 816 and 408 Network Platforms.
“With the open environment, people could wander out to the edges and chill, enjoy the lighting, the video, the structure, and the music without having to squeeze inside to experience great sound,” says Ingram, adding that he received positive feedback on Do LaB’s sound from everyone from artists to fans. “I’ve had engineers from other stages come by and say, ‘This sounds great.’ Guest engineers have been really happy with the PA. And the audience has literally been turning around and thanking me for the audio.”
