d&b enriches experience at Riyadh cultural hub
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The most prominent Saudi landmark of 2021, Boulevard Riyadh City was the pride of Riyadh Season 2021/22. Built from the ground up by local companies, the zone covers some 900,000sq.m and contains nine areas, each with its own set of events. Each area contains restaurants, cafés, upmarket boutiques, gardens, games centres and more. Special features include the largest cinema in the Kingdom, an electric car circuit, a skating rink and four theatres for concerts and shows.
Each theatre is fully equipped with a V-Series sound system from d&b supplied by d&b’s local sales partner and AV experts, 7Hertz.
7Hertz managing partner, Chadi Masri, explains that they were approached by Sela, a leading events management company based in Saudi Arabia and operating worldwide. Sela has been delivering the Riyadh Season since 2019 and, as such, was responsible for designing and specifying the systems destined for the new theatres.
“Our relationship with Sela goes back a long way,” says Masri. “We’ve known the technical director, Hicham Bitar, and the head of audio, Samer Atallah, for some time now and have built up a relationship of trust over the years. They know that we always do our best for our customers. When this project came along, they had already more or less made up their minds that it would be d&b, so naturally we were their first choice.”
Technical director, Hicham Bitar takes up the story: “Having used d&b on a number of different events worldwide and visited the company headquarters in Germany for seminars and training, we were already very familiar with the brand,” he explains.
“For this project we required a solution that covered all the bases: extremely high quality, modern, flexible enough to handle all types of performance and rider-friendly. During the Season – and even beyond now that the Boulevard Riyadh City is a permanent structure – we have different artists coming in with a different show every week, so it was imperative for us to have systems that we are proud to present to any engineer and that all engineers are happy to use. d&b was a very easy choice!”
Head of audio, Samer Atallah, adds, “When considering the limitations for designing an indoor sound system for a theatre, there are two points to keep in mind; first, directivity of sound, and second, homogenous sound across the venue. d&b are leading the industry at the moment in terms of sound directivity - in short putting the energy where needed and avoid exciting unwanted parts of the venue which can yield late reflections and reverberation which may, in turn, deteriorate speech intelligibility. This is a key issue for the audience since we are mainly engaged in theatrical plays. People need to understand every word to live the experience.”
Sela decided on d&b V-Series line array systems throughout due to their high performance capabilities and versatility. The two largest theatres (Bakr Al Shaddi and Mohammad Al Ali) range in capacity from 600 to 900 seats and sport L/R hangs of 10 x V8 and two V12 per side supported by a pair of centrally flown large format SL-SUB cardioid subwoofers. Four T10s and two Y7Ps act as front-fills and side-fills respectively, and four M4 stage monitors complete the lineup.
The two smaller theatres (Al Andaleeb and Kawkab Al Sharq) are set up in cabaret style with guest seated at tables for an integrated dining and entertainment experience. Here, Sela opted for L/R arrays of three V8 and one V12 per side and a pair of centrally flown medium format KSL-SUB cardioid subwoofers. Once again, front-fill and side-fill duties are performed by four T10s and two Y7ps respectively with four M4 stage monitors for foldback. d&b’s ArrayProcessing technology is used throughout to optimise performance across the listening zones of each theatre.
“It was, and still is, very challenging for sound designers to deliver the same audio experience for every seat in the house, but d&b made it easy for us with their ArrayProcessing technology, a combination of filters and delays for each cabinet that makes great sound even better, in terms of both minimum SPL variation and frequency response,” notes Samer.
