alot of people seem to like to use walls of hay stacks to help reduce noise polution if you have any hay lying about (sounds funny for me to say that as I’m from suburbia but i’m aware some people actualy have spare hay lying about :laugh_at:)

Daftfader is right about the bass. I’m no expert in sound engineering etc, but 200m is not far at all. Maybe raising the speakers well off the floor is an idea, but the richness of the bass would be lost and anything like hay bales used as screens would have to be higher too.
A new location is probably the best idea.

@gavinthedog 394816 wrote:

What did your mates go down for? I was under the impression that if you were amicable with the police they’d generally be alright back and just tell you to shut the system down, and that if you left when the landowner asked it wasn’t tresspass.

holding a licensable activity without the relevant license… even one of the cops in charge said he thought the penalty was harsh but at the same time this did happen in East Anglia where both sides wanted to be stubborn with predictable unpleasant results.

the whole criminal justice system wanted to make a stand that property rights and licensing laws were to be respected however inconvenient they may be.

these days even if the cops let you get away with the rig they may well still start searching people and asking unwanted questions…

200m is way too close. most people would dial 999 if they saw a load of young people in cars turning up virtually next door to them even if they were a very friendly and good natured crowd….

That sounds like a MUCH more sensible place!

sound ecko’s through vallys so the best thing to do would be stop the majority of the sound b4 it gets too far out … make a ring of hay bales as high as the speakers and make it into an arena where you dance inside and the speakers are allso inside.

If you can find something solid to aim the direct dispersion from the speakers (ie what comes out of the front of the boxes) you will get much less leakage – we tend to use hills (of which there many in Scotland), and you mentioned it being a foresty/hilly area. The main thing is to get something solid between the speakers and any place where the leakage would cause a problem (the hay bales idea is a good one too, as hay bales would work in a similar way to the foam used to soundproof studios)…

Echos and reflections are much less of a problem, as the intensity of the sound is greatly reduced when it’s reflected so I wouldn’t worry too much about that – the important thing is to get something to interrupt the direct path to anyone who might complain.

Most of the time when people put sound equipment into valley’s, there is a tendency to point it along the line of the valley – never worked out why, as thats the easiest way to get noise complaints, but in my experience it’s what happens. If they set up at right angles – ie pointing into one of the hills, they would have far less trouble (as I say, this is how we always set up, and we never get noise complaints :love: )