Latvia celebrates centenary with d&b
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Purpose-built in 1955 the Mežaparks Great Bandstand where the event was staged is an open-air venue of unexpected dimensions. Not unlike a Roman amphitheatre, except that the curved stepped crucible is where the 16,000 plus performers are arrayed, facing onto an audience of up to 30,000. With so many voices and the presentational environment, promoter Girts Majors of Positivus Event turned to audio provider UBS to design an audio solution.
“The implementation of a d&b audiotechnik system was a key component in making this event truly memorable,” says Edmunds Verners Zazerskis, MD of UBS. “UBS was founded in 1998 and we have been providing sound for different choir song festivals for many years; Nordic; Baltic Choral festivals; Latvian School Youth Song and Dance Celebrations; and the many song and dance festivals staged here in Riga, nearly all with our d&b systems.
“Even so, such a large event was not without challenges. The audience area is approximately 130m x 130m; it would not be possible to get even SPL for all seats with a simple two or four hangs of line array, even if they are twenty metres high. And such intrusive towers with long arrays would in terms of listening experience virtually split choir from audience which is completely contrary to the whole ethos of how these events are meant to be experienced. The magic feel for the audience is not to be sat in front of an enormous choir and PA system and just listen, the intention is for them to become a part of that choir and even sing together.
“Our in-depth experience providing sound for choir events and the sonic transparency of d&b systems enabled us to add that elusive ‘magic’ ingredient.”
Zazerskis designed a distributed system solution. “We installed six small V-Series loudspeaker line-arrays evenly spaced across the full 130 metre audience area width, with an additional 25 V7P point source speakers augmented by V-Subs distributed throughout the choir. Signal distribution was done in quite a sophisticated way, delivering different signals from adjacent loudspeakers to any position in the audience, avoiding destructive phase cancellation.
“The goal was to merge as many as possible virtual choirs from small point source speakers, V7P, together with live voices of the choir, the main system, and the singing audience as well. The result was reached quite effortlessly. Typical of our experience with d&b systems - just setting the necessary delays from ArrayCalc via import to R1 and just some minor or no EQ to most loudspeakers produced the totally massive, magical sound we desired.”
The centenary celebrations began in May of 2017 and will run until January 2021, but this event in July 2018 celebrated the heart of the nation portrayed in a traditional choir and dance spectacular. Girts Majors declared the event a great success. “Everyone involved was very satisfied with the result. This was a big step forward compared to previous events.”
(Jim Evans)
