The very wide site - measuring some 160m wide by just 70m deep, with the stage on one of the long sides - created an acoustical challenge for production manager Henry Crallan and Capital Sound's techs Ian Colville and Finbar Neenan. With housing next to the arena, achieving coverage across the breadth of the arena without excess noise spill was tricky. The solution was to use two ground stacks of Clair Bros i4 almost at right angles to the stage as outfills to complement the W8L/W8LC main left and right PA. FOH engineer Clive Franks mixed on a Yamaha PM4000, and Capital Sound's Martin Connolly commented: "The system wasn't driven very hard but it was an incredibly full sound that was really impressive."
The Martin system was processed by XTA DP226 processors, programmed using XTA Audiocore software running on a laptop PC. "These days we use XTA and Audiocore for all our Martin Audio systems," adds Connolly. "It gives us both the precision and the audio quality to match a high quality loudspeaker system like the W8L."
(Lee Baldock)
