The marketing whizzkids at the UK's leading mobile telecom company O2 and the English Rugby Football Union (RFU) have come up with a unique summer promotion - the O2 Scrum on the Beach, which is touring the UK's popular seaside resorts. This being the British summer, Dimension Audio has chosen sturdy Electro-Voice line arrays to cope with the unpredictable weather conditions!

O2 and the RFU's Play On campaign have combined forces to create a season of free beach festivals, attended by several England international rugby players, where visitors can play beach rugby and listen to live music. At all its 5 locations, including the Urban Beaches planned for London and Birmingham, the set-up will involve a 200-metre stretch of beach accommodating up to ten beach rugby courts, and a main stage for live appearances by the sport's stars and a live concert performance from a steel band.

Dimension Audio is providing PA for the events, which run through July and August. Apart from the obvious environmental challenge posed by the British weather, and the salt and sand of these beach locations, Dimension was looking for an easily-configurable system to deliver high-quality sound, namely a combination of EV XLC and XLE line array modules under IRIS-Net control.

"We had to project high-quality audio coverage over 200 metres of beach," explains James Loveless, project manager for Dimension Audio. "To do this, we had EV XLC at the main stage, and delays of XLE to get across the beach. The whole area was divided into sections, which we mirrored using IRIS-Net, and we had to get the right levels to the right places at the right time. Apart from the presenters and the music on the main stage, we had to broadcast announcements and speeches to the whole festival area; there were ten beach rugby pitches, a Punch & Judy stand with its own little PA system, and a special O2 zone for their own customers. IRIS-Net allows us to split up the outputs at the touch of a button, and makes it easy to cover all the delays."

Dimension Audio used Electro-Voice's new Tour Grade TG5 and TG7 to power the system, providing excellent coverage from the ground-stacked XLC 127DVX cabinets (4 each side of the stage) and X-Subs (4 in total), extending across the whole beach area by using two delay stacks of compact XLE cabinets, each with 4 modules.

Dimension's XLC system has also seen action recently at the London Festival of Architecture, for the Edwin Shirley Group, and at the press launch of Vauxhall's newest car, the Insignia.