Formed in 2003, ESL has built up a reputation for providing complete production infrastructures, and director Paul Galley knew that with its unique controllability, the award-winning MLA Compact would enable the company not only to provide more potent onsite sound for larger audiences than they were able to previously, but also satisfy the requirements from local councils regarding offsite environmental noise.
"MLA technology represents a new direction in the way loudspeaker arrays are configured and controlled," he said. "It represents a radical departure from conventional line array thinking, and delivers much more consistent sound across the audience."
Nevertheless, the purchase was only ratified after thorough market research. "We had reached a point where our existing line array could only provide coverage for audiences of up to 5,000, so that a bigger format was necessary. We started with a blank canvas, looking at various systems, taking into account whether the brand appeared on riders and whether demo stock was available. We were determined to invest in future technology rather than running the risk of devaluing our investment."
The company already had a long-standing relationship with Martin Audio's lead product support engineer, Andy Davies, and it was a product demo arranged by Martin Audio and LMC Audio at the Bedford Millennium Studios that convinced them.
"It was the ability to control the sound, in particular, that interested us, and at this demo we were completely blown away," said Galley. "MLA Compact fitted our budget and when we looked at the cardioid design of the MLX subs, and hard avoid cancellation in the software, the decision became a no brainer."
Initially, two demo rigs were provided - for a festival and a religious event. "The latter was in a hangar with extreme reverberation time, and since there was trading taking place on the periphery we had to taper off the sound so the traders could work."
As a result of this ESL placed an order for 18 MLA Compact cells and six of the large MLX subs. At the same time they purchased four of Martin Audio's powerful DD12 Differential Dispersion enclosures for front-fills "which sounded as big as the line array in its own right," according to Paul Galley.
(Jim Evans)
