These challenges were not limited to the sheer size of the festival. "It was very difficult to provide coverage to the auditorium area," notes sound engineer and FOH mixer Andris Uze. "We had no rigging points available, no cranes allowed, plus no place to put a centre cluster, which necessitated many small delay and fill boxes."
Meyer Sound's MAPP Online Pro acoustical prediction programme proved to be a great partner for Uze, and helped to create a design of left and right towers of 12 Milo line array loudspeakers per side, with six 700-HP subwoofers per side in an end-fired configuration. Two CQ-1 loudspeakers, three UPA-1P loudspeakers, and five 700-HP subwoofers served as centre-fill.
Six UPA-1P loudspeakers were placed in the rear for delay. Monitoring was courtesy of 10 UPM-1P loudspeakers, four UPJ-1P VariO loudspeakers, and 16 MJF-212A stage monitors. A SIM 3 audio analyzer handled system tuning.
"The artists and conductors told us how well the system reproduced the sound of the choir without any alteration, even when the SPL was about 20 dB higher once we switched it on," reports Uze.
(Jim Evans)
