Although the MLA has been designed to take on venues up to stadium level, the Roundhouse has a capacity of just 1,800 (seated) and 3,300 standing - and being circular the throw distance is fairly minimal.
The design was set accordingly. With the newly created balcony also requiring coverage, eight MLA elements were flown at either side of the stage, with eight MLX subs in a broadside array, hidden under the stage apron. A further two flown four-element W8LC Compact arrays provided side-fills and four W8LM Mini arrays provided coverage for the VIP bar (balcony level, stage right).
Martin Audio research & development director Jason Baird set up (and locked out) the multi-cellular processing using MLA's Display 2.0 optimisation software. The finishing touch was to 'welcome' visiting sound engineers with a clearly positioned notice at the FOH rack position, advising that they were about to mix their sound through a revolutionary system.
Baird says: "We have seen a high concentration of mix engineers adopting completely different approaches - from applying extreme amounts of boost and cut to running their desk output EQ totally flat. However, the idea of the system was not to show up the inadequacies of sound engineers but to make the front-of-house engineer into a star."
Experienced FOH engineer Huw Richards, who took charge of the system throughout the Festival (and inducted the incoming engineers) says, "The sound is completely smooth and consistent wherever you stand in the room."
He adds, "We mixed Faithless entirely flat and produced a fantastic sound which measured a high SPL at the desk. We went from there to an opera singer, Latin guitarist and orchestra [Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón and classical guitarist Milos Karadaglic] where we were running the system down to 95dB - and you could hear a pin drop."
(Jim Evans)
