L-Acoustics Powers PSY’s Summer Swag Spectacle

When PSY unleashed Gangnam Style in 2012, he didn’t just dominate YouTube—he rewired the global pop circuit. Fast-forward to today, and his annual Summer Swag tour has become a cultural juggernaut in its own right, packing 35,000-capacity stadiums across South Korea for four-hour water-drenched extravaganzas that blur the line between festival and full-blown carnival. With guest appearances from Rosé, G-Dragon, and J-Hope, each artist brought a fresh sonic demand to the mix.

Yet the biggest challenge lay not in the setlist; but in bringing together a high-performance audio architecture that would match the energy and impact of the world-class performers that took the stage by storm. And to meet this objective, the organisers turned to Seoul Sound – a renowned technical solutions maverick, who in-turn worked alongside sister company Klausys – an L-Acoustics Certified Provider – to coalesce a comprehensive K1 system that enthralled not just the fans, but the superstars that performed on stage as well.

For Seoul Sound, this year’s nine-city run proved the ultimate test of precision sound in punishing conditions, where water cannons, surprise superstar cameos, and relentless humidity collided head-on. Summer Swag’s iconic water cannons and sprinklers ruled out traditional delay towers; and that pushed the system design to extremes. “The artist and tour producers specifically requested K1 as the main system to achieve 130-metre throws without requiring any delay towers,” explained Soonil Yoon, FOH Engineer at Seoul Sound. “With water cannons and sprinklers occupying much of the audience area, we had to rely entirely on the main hangs to provide uniform coverage to the entire audience.”

Seoul Sound and Klausys turned to Soundvision 3D modelling software to tailor each venue. Every stadium demanded its own unique response to shifting capacities, weather, and the sheer unpredictability of integrating water effects with live sound reinforcement—all while catering to PSY’s genre-hopping set that ricocheted between K-pop, EDM, rap, rock, and stripped-down ballads.

The rig itself was as ambitious as the show: main left-right arrays of 16 units of the K1 with 4 units of the K2 per side, backed by 8 units of the K1-SB subs flown behind each hang. Side-fill extension hangs of 8 units of the K2 boxes per side kept the edges covered, while 14 pairs of Kara enclosures stitched together the stage-front detail. Beneath the stage, 15 units of the SB28 subwoofers per side delivered the gut-punch low end without encroaching on valuable splash zones. Power came via LA12X amplified controllers for the flown system, with LA8 units driving ground subs and side-fills through an AES/EBU network protocol.

“Sometimes the ‘less is more’ principle plays a big role for shows like this,” noted Soonil. “Shows are already complex enough. With L-Acoustics systems, you can challenge yourself to provide massive sound coverage through a relatively minimal, simple straightforward.”

South Korea’s brutal summer climate piled on further complexity, with searing daytime heat giving way to volatile humidity shifts by nightfall. Add rain and torrents of show water effects turned load-ins into logistical quagmires. Drawing on their wealth of experience, however, the team were prompt in finding an efficient solution: overnight setups, where cooler conditions gave crews the edge, while the K Series hardware’s rugged build shrugged off everything nature threw at it.

For PSY, precision was non-negotiable. At the Daejeon show, he singled out Seoul Sound’s crew for public praise, spotlighting FOH engineer Soonil Yoon for the sonic excellence achieved through painstaking rehearsals. That acknowledgement crowned a tour where innovation thrived under constraint. By scrapping delay towers entirely, Seoul Sound streamlined the production while meeting the unique demands of the spectacle head-on—proof that sometimes the sharpest solutions are forged when options are stripped away.