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The 2024 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, better known as Coachella, is held annually at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California. Founded in 1999, the two-weekend event features artists from a wide range of musical genres, including rock, pop, indie, hip-hop, and electronic music, as well as art installations and sculptures.
Tim Nauss, Managing Director of Denver-based Dapper Productions, has been hired by Goldenvoice and NEP Sceenworks as the Main Stage Screen Producer. He has previously worked with Analog Way products using an Aquilon C+ during the 2024 Super Bowl Halftime Show and an RS4 during the 2024 Oscars broadcast, where he served as a systems engineer.
“Using Analog Way on these shows was a good testing ground for using the Aquilon C+ on the Coachella main stage,” said Nauss. “Coachella is a big deal for us and our guests: it’s the biggest U.S. festival of the year. Analog Way has published documentation outlining the latency levels, what causes them, and how to minimize them overall. We were excited to be able to confidently say how much latency the switch was adding and know we could design solutions to improve that for our guests. At Coachella, every guest brings a best-in-class product, and low latency is critical to helping us deliver that.”
Connor Cronk, Inside Sales and Support Specialist at Analog Way, said, “Aquilon C+ was a great choice because of its low latency, stacking capabilities, and all the power it provides in a single box, eliminating the need to connect multiple devices together. The system is also user-friendly and has a relatively short learning curve: you can master all the basic features and be up and running in a matter of hours.”
“Most of the time, the main stage would host five different artists, each with their own content, their own creative team, and often their own servers,” says Sean W Green, Screens’ technical director. Green is also the director of programming and engineering for his company, Veserius, based in Astoria, Oregon. “My role with the Aquilon C+ was to make sure the artists’ content interfaced quickly with the screen and looked the way they wanted it to.”
On site, a former 16-metre broadcast truck was converted to serve as a screen truck. “The entire screen infrastructure was built, including Analog Way,” Nauss reported.
“Because we had to connect to everything the guests brought, we had an 8x HDMI router in front and a 16x HDMI router on stage, which fed a 48x router in the truck,” Green said. “That fed the two Aquilons, one primary and one backup, both running constantly.
“In the Aquilon, we had five layers for upscaling with UHD inputs, three layers allocated to IMAG PIPing, and backgrounds used for native inputs,” Green continues. “The first 17 inputs in the Aquilon were guest inputs; inputs 18-20 were reserved for the venue interstitials, featuring scenic California scenery between acts, and inputs 21-24 were program and backup feeds and two emergency feeds for announcements, if needed.”
Nauss and his team designed the workflow for the displays, allowing them to host all guest feeds from the time they arrive at the venue until the end of the show. “Other festival stages typically host one or two systems at a time. On the main stage, we were able to establish and maintain a full guest feed schedule throughout the day,” he explains. “With so many inputs, Analog Way allowed us to monitor the feeds all day long, spotting issues, and troubleshooting them.”
Unlike Nauss, Green had never used Analog Way equipment before. “It was really easy to use and intuitive – it just made sense,” he noted. “I found the Aquilon quick to program and quick to implement changes.”
Nauss says Analog Way’s Zoom training session allowed his entire team to join Green in learning how to use the Aquilon and confirm that the setup they envisioned for the show would actually work. He was impressed with Analog Way’s additional online training of Green to gain an even deeper understanding of the Aquilon C+.
“Throughout the process, Connor was very supportive, answering our questions and connecting us with tech support at the show,” Nauss added. “Everyone at Analog Way was always very quick to respond, as if they were ready to jump in.”
Green, who does music concerts, such as U2 and Dead & Company at the Las Vegas Sphere, as well as corporate projects, has a new commercial job coming up that will feature another Analog Way Aquilon.