A jury consisting of chief editors of leading newspapers and magazines decide on the winner with previous recipients having included Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, Dalai Lama, Bono and George Clooney, and the event itself is high profile affair with specially invited guests. This year's recipient was Juergen Loew, the coach of the German national football team, in recognition not only of his role in their World Cup victory but also his leadership style, and as an ambassador of a modern and cosmopolitan Germany.
AE Sound & Light GmbH provide production duties, and in former years they have provided coverage with Martin Audio's W8LM Mini Line Array. But owing to the provision of a larger video screen - and other changes on stage - they were left with dramatically less space this time around. With the event involving speech, playback tracks and a live band, all-round versatility and performance remained paramount.
Thus Martin Audio's MLA Mini, the ultra-compact version of its MLA Multi-cellular Loudspeaker Array, proved to be the perfect solution.
Taking place at the local Congress Centre in Baden-Baden on 23 January, Michael Schneider, sound engineer and owner of AE, stated, "Since it wasn't only speech involved, I was a bit concerned in the beginning about using this small MLA Mini for such an important event, as recommended by Peter 'Ossi' Oswald, my Martin Audio representative with United B [Martin Audio's German distributor]. On the other hand, I'd heard so many good things about MLA Mini, that I felt this might be the right tool for the job.
"The result was impressive right from set up, without any additional 'squeezing' on the EQ. Not only did the system provide exceptional coverage but the tonality and dynamic was at such a high level - much more than you would expect from a double 6" system! We used three sets of MLA starter packages as main PA - so basically four tops each as Left, Centre and Right hang."
Schneider continues, "Due to the fact that the venue has a very low ceiling we were not able to fly the system as high as we wanted, and this was further complicated by obstructive lighting. We therefore used four [Martin Audio] DD6 enclosures as a delay line which usually wouldn't be necessary using the MLA Mini over such a distance. We placed another six DD6 as down-fill on the front truss as we hadn't been allowed to put any enclosures on stage; we also used the same enclosure as stage monitors."
Summing up, Schneider said, "We eventually ended up having nearly an 'invisible' sound system, with an extraordinarily even coverage and dynamic throughout the entire venue."
(Jim Evans)
