Country Thunder has cancelled its weekend festival in Calgary just days before it was set to begin, bringing an abrupt end to one of the city's marquee summer music events. The organisers cited a variety of issues, but singled out the city's new noise cap as the decisive factor behind the decision.
According to the festival, the new noise cap, set five decibels lower than last year's limit, was the final nail in the coffin for this year's edition. The reduction, while it may sound modest on paper, proved enough to make the event unworkable in the organisers' view.
The cancellation caps what has been a busy, drama-filled week for Calgary's music festival scene. In the lead-up, politicians had been going back and forth on social media over the new restrictions for this year's event, underscoring how contentious the issue had become.
At the heart of the dispute is the level of bass. While the gap between the old and new caps sounds small as a number, sound is not perceived in a linear way: a difference of around 10 decibels is interpreted by the human ear as a doubling of volume, which helps explain why just a few decibels carry so much weight.
Complicating matters further, decibel readings can vary drastically depending on the environment. Standing right next to a speaker produces a very high reading, while the same sound measured a couple of hundred metres away registers far lower, and surfaces that bounce the sound around can change the result again, making a single cap difficult to apply consistently.
Amid the back-and-forth, Mayor Jeremy Farkas announced on Friday evening, through social media, that the city had reached an agreement with Stampede tent operators. Under that deal, live music will end at midnight on both weekends and weeknights, and the bass will be lowered.
The contrast between the two outcomes, a cancelled Country Thunder on one side and a negotiated arrangement with Stampede tent operators on the other, points to the balancing act facing Calgary as it tries to square its packed festival calendar with tighter limits on noise.