Riyadh (March 2, 2026)—Festivals are an international phenomenon, and Soundstorm is one of the largest in Saudi Arabia. Held in the Banban Desert area north of Riyadh, the three-day event attracted 450,000 people this past winter. Clair Global was involved in a number of aspects, including providing audio for the Big Beat mainstage, four Underground stages, and festival comms for all stages.
International artists playing Big Beast included Ukrainian DJ Korolova, DJ Snake, Armin van Buuren, Swedish House Mafia, Steve Aoki, Pitbull, Benson Boone, Post Malone, Halsey and Cardi B; local and regional performers included Ibrahim Alsultan, Zena Emad, Balqees and Omar Basaad.
Clair KSA had been involved with Soundstorm before, but this marked the first time it tackled sound for the Big Beast main stage. Answering the challenge, it brought in more than 100 Clair Global crew members to handle the event. “We do plenty of stadium shows all over the world, all of the time, but this one was very different,” said Clair Global KSA’s Stu Wright. “Given the amount of people that backed us by making the change, we had to make sure we delivered it flawlessly, and client feedback suggests we did. It’s a big deal to replace your audio vendor on any main stage, especially this one, and I personally felt the pressure to get it right.”
Clair’s UK-based engineering team headed up by Josh Lloyd designed Big Beast’s audio reinforcement using an L-Acoustics system. K1-SB, K1 and K2 loudspeakers made up main and side hangs, flown and ground KS28 sub arrays were used to ensure sub coverage down field and to help with SPL. More boxes of K1-SB, K1 and K2 were chosen for a half-dozen large delay hangs. Control packages for musical acts across all stages were DiGiCo; at Big Beast FOH and monitors, four SD7 Quantum were used, as well as an SD12-96 which served as a production console.
Lloyd noted, “It’s quite varied in terms of artistic content, with a mix of both EDM acts and live bands performing. From a system design point of view, we needed to generate high impact, with an almost ‘in your face’, low end, chest-pumping system response for that club experience, while creating a system that also works for bands. Getting the rejection on-stage, the directivity control with low frequency and sub information correct was very important.”
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The VIB (Very Important Beast) suites were all equipped with Cohesion CF24 and CF Subs and utilized a Yamaha CL5 control surface. There are elevated zones too, where fans could experience live music from panoramic viewing decks. Clair also supplied the site’s EVAC PA system with Clair i-3 3-way speaker cabinets and Yamaha DM7-EX and DM7 Compact digital mixing consoles.
Elsewhere, Clair was responsible for audio across four of Soundstorm’s Underground stages,run by Tristan Johnson. The Plexi and Log stages utilized Cohesion CO12 large format loudspeaker systems, while the Port stage used a d&b audiotechnik KSL8 system, while the 360-degree Silk stage used a d&b audiotechnik V8/12 deployment. The Underground stages housed a combination of DiGiCo SD10, SD12-96 and SD11 consoles.
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To handle the festival’s critical comms, Clair devised a system encompassing Riedel Communications Bolero belt packs (171), antennas (64), Reidel Smart Panels (108) powered by Artist-1024 frames (3), a single Artist-32 frame and 120 x RTS DBP hardwired belt packs with an ODIN frame and 36 x Netgear 4250 switches.