The inaugural CAN post-rock music festival transformed the mountainous surroundings of Zhujiajian Island into a transcendent sonic experience. Over three days, 19 experimental post-rock bands from 11 countries converged amidst the breathtaking vistas of Daqingshan National Park in China’s Zhejiang province, with the dramatic coastline of the Zhoushan archipelago providing an ethereal backdrop. The festival attracted an international line-up of bands, including The Seven Mile Journey, a Danish band who hadn’t graced Chinese stages since 2016, Whale Fall and This Will Destroy You from the United States, Australia’s We Lost the Sea, and World’s End Girlfriend from Japan.

Post-rock is a genre that eschews traditional song structures in favour of atmospheric, textural soundscapes. To fully immerse festival attendees in this unique sonic world, the organizers enlisted the help of L-Acoustics Certified Provider Rightway Audio Consultants (RAC) to design and deploy an L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound system. “Our main goal in choosing L-ISA was to enhance the festival performances by displaying the genre’s sense of emotion and atmosphere through a live immersive audio experience,” said Huang Yadong, Chief Producer of the CAN Festival.

A post-rock fan for over a decade, festival creator and founder, Can was impressed with L-ISA technology at festivals he attended in Europe and China. “It has been my dream to produce a post-rock festival in China,” he said. “This year, when that dream came true, I was compelled to offer the same L-ISA experience that had left a lasting impression on me,” he explained.

Sound System Designer of Can Festival and RAC’s Director of L-ISA Immersive Sound, Li Feng, worked closely with the festival team and visiting band engineers to create a 5.1 L-ISA configuration. This included a Scene System of five hangs of twelve L-Acoustics K2 speakers, with an Extension system of two further hangs of 12 Kara speakers. Front-fill was accomplished with 16 Kara boxes atop 32 KS28 subwoofers, ground-stacked in groups of eight. Nine Kara boxes placed around the audience area created a surround system.

Despite challenging weather conditions during setup, the L-Acoustics K Series IP55 rating ensured the system remained reliable throughout the three-day event. Visiting engineers were able to seamlessly integrate their pre-mixed spatial audio files into the L-ISA workflow, creating an unforgettable listening experience for the thousands of attendees.

“Instruments with wider frequency range like the violin, or even electronic soundscapes, benefitted from object positioning. We could manipulate the mix not just on the frontal system but from the rear surround as well,” said Wang Tiequn, Chief Sound Designer of the festival. “If you closed your eyes, it felt like you were right on the stage.”

RAC’s first-time presentation of a post-rock festival in L-ISA proved to be a unforgettable experience for outdoor festival attendees, who made their appreciation known on local social media platforms. “CAN Festival turned out to be a charming listening experience for festival-goers and an equally pleasant mixing experience for touring engineers, who easily adopted L-ISA technology’s streamlined and efficient processes. Some engineers happily remarked that ‘There’s no way back!’ from the live immersive audio experience,” concluded Li Feng of Rightway Audio Consultants.

L-Acoustics