On July 20th, the Parookaville music festival in Weeze, Germany, opened its doors for the fourth year for three days of electronic and house music delivered by some of the biggest DJs of the genre such as David Guetta, Zedd, Armin van Buuren, and Hardwell. With 80,000 music lovers in attendance, Parookaville again sold out to retain its status as the country’s largest EDM festival.

The main stage with its spectacular set and attention to detail was among the largest festival stages in Europe at over 200 meters wide. Enhancing the setup and expanding the visual impact even further were 160 Proteus Hybrid moving heads, Elation’s market-leading, full-featured IP65 luminaire, which lined the downstage edge with more fixtures spread across the setup.

On site as general technical service provider was POOLgroup and as the skies tend to open up at Parookaville POOLgroup lighting designer Robert Sommer put his trust in the weatherproof moving heads. “Set and stage construction plays a very, very important role at the Parookaville Festival,” he commented. “Everything is very detailed and lovingly designed. Air domes or other weather protection devices simply do not fit into the picture. In this regard, the weatherproof Proteus Hybrid was invaluable. Quite apart from that, they are absolutely convincing with their performance. They are fast, bright and well equipped. And, at an open-air festival, it’s nice to not have to worry about lamps when it’s raining.”

Rain, however, did not materialize in what was an unusually dry summer in Germany. With their multi-environmental IP65 protection however, the Proteus Hybrid luminaires had no problems handling the extraordinary amount of dust that kicked up over the three day festival. “A number of fixtures are classified as waterproof but IP65 also protects against dust, which not only ensures greater reliability and performance but also saves subsequent service costs,” emphasizes Sommer. In addition to the large number of Proteus Hybrids used on the festival’s main stage, additional Elation fixtures were used on other stages and locations at 2018’s Parookaville.

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