Professional Wireless Systems Handles Coachella Frequency Coordination

The challenge of radio frequency interference in the middle of the desert at this year’s Coachella was a nonissue for all who performed and attended. Professional Wireless Systems (PWS) was on-hand to provide flawless frequency coordination for some of the biggest names in the music business, as well as numerous sponsors on site.

Professional Wireless Systems (PWS) was on-hand to provide frequency coordination for Coachella this year.

The PWS crew was responsible for coordinating all wireless microphones, in-ear monitors and communications for the eight music stages, The Antarctic Dome, a sponsor stage, content ENG crews, artist interviews crews and a film crew. To help coordinate all these activities, PWS worked closely with Goldenvoice and the festival audio provider, Rat Sound.

PWS prides itself on being a hands-on company when it comes to serving its clients. Although the company was only charged with providing frequency coordination services at Coachella, PWS was ready with backup RF equipment and PWS custom products to handle any issues that might have come up during the festival.

“From an RF standpoint, one might think that the great thing about doing Coachella is the location,” says Danny Lane, RF project manager, PWS. “But once we conducted an RF sweep of the grounds, we found 16 Digital Television (DTV) channels that were completely unusable; we even picked up an analog TV station still broadcasting.

We tried to get as much information as we could in advance from all the wireless users at the festival so we could build the coordination ahead of time. The main coordination is centered on Rat Sound’s gear which lives on the stages and is utilized by some bands. At one point PWS’ IAS software was kind enough to let us know that we were coordinating Coachella with 12 million mathematic potentials for intermodulation interference.”