a huge rig can actually cause more problems than good times, its heavier, more expensive (although the cost of pro audio kit has dropped loads in the last 20 years). more people want to steal it, and outside licensed venues (and even in some licensed venues!) there isn’t a limitless supply of electricity – for instance my mates found that in their last licensed venue they had more rig than the 13A sockets would reliably supply, and the 16A blue commando-socket and associated RCD in the venue were fucked and no electrician had been near the wiring for 6 years (in fact the venue was locked off on health and safety grounds soon afterwards).
If you do not have enough electricity, all your posh sound equipment will sound shit, and unless anyone is in the habit of monitoring power consumption regularly this isn’t easy to notice and can get blamed on a variety of other sources. (and even I do not do this on the non UPS protected mains (the UPS tells you how much power you are using in its software) and I should really be doing this as part of my largely environmentally friendly outlook on life).
I can’t however blame anyone below age 30-35 for not being as aware of this as they stopped teaching young people about proper electronics/science at high school in England about 10-20 years ago, even wiring a mains plug is uncommon as it is EU law that new equipment must have one for the country it is sold in, plus all our generations were given the incorrect idea there would be endless cheap energy after 2000 due to new technology.
EDIT : just seen on your profile you are an electrical engineer so at least got a head start on most folk but even then its easy to get caught out especially with the power of amps these days. it was a standing joke here in EA that crews would build up huge stacks, then try and power them on the most sketchy gensets (a mixture of petrol and diesel ones of dubious reliability where misfuelling was not uncommon), and so the rig would cut out multiple times during the night.
But there is not always a limitless supply of energy for your sound equipment (or other vital stuff!), (and even so called tested supplies might not be up to spec) so whether or not you do “illegal” raves its worth learning to make the most of what resources you do have…
