How much do you really know about sound and its amplification? Unless you're deeply involved in sound engineering, we're guessing not much. That's why when Red Bull Music Academy's world tour stopped in Cape Town, we thought the concept was great: Build a soundsystem in a few days, then have a party where you play on it over the weekend. As Clint Senger from Sun Pro-Audio—the team that helped pull it all together—describes it, the process wasn't all fun and games. The team did in three weeks what usually takes eight. "It was a little bit of a panic," he laughs. They put the finishing touches on the system a few minutes before they turned the whole thing on.

With an audience of artists, promoters and curious onlookers present while they put it together, it was a bit different than most jobs. "We wound the coils, sewed the circuit boards on... We also talked a lot about passive crossovers, and explained the difference between that and digital. The problem with nightclubs is that they spend more money on couches than on soundsystems. Slowly, I think, things are changing."