Meyer Sound News : Party in the Park: A Spectactular Cangreen Showcase for Meyer Sound's M3D Line Array Loudspeaker System

Party in the Park: A Spectactular Cangreen Showcase for Meyer Sound's M3D Line Array Loudspeaker System

The system design was based around sixteen M3D cabinets left and right of the stage. These were augmented by MSL-4s for front fill and out fill... projecting the high end out to around 160 meters was a pair of SB-1 Sound Beam parabolic high frequency units flown alongside the top of each of the M3D arrays.

Born in 1997, Party in the Park in London's Hyde Park is a one-day, multi-artist event produced and promoted on behalf of the Prince's Trust by the Solo agency.

In its five years, PITP has grown in both size and stature. July 8th of this year saw the biggest party so far, with a 100,000-strong audience enjoying a vast array of acts including Ricky Martin, Atomic Kitten, Usher, Ronan Keating, Lil' Bow Wow, Anastacia, Shaggy, Hear'say, Wheatus, Craig David, A1, Wyclef Jean, Sugababes, Sisqo, Geri Halliwell, Eddy Grant, Destiny's Child, Nelly Furtado, David Gray, Emma Bunton, Catatonia, Jamiroquai and Tom Jones.

This show was about as complex as it gets and included a massive distributed PA system provided by north London-based Canegreen. Canegreen - who have also subsequently picked up several other key Solo-produced shows - had the opportunity to showcase its newly-acquired Meyer Sound M3D Line Array Loudspeaker system in Hyde Park.

SOUND DESIGN

Andrew Frengley, who designed the PITP PA system for Canegreen, commented, "You don't start many shows with as much atmosphere as this, do you? There are 100,000 people out there and they're about to see some of the top pop acts around. We did the Trafalgar Square concert with the M3D system, the week before this show, to work it out for the first time in a major concert situation, so the two events have provided a really exciting challenge for us." He adds, "There's always a big difference between testing a PA in an open field and then doing a real show with an audience, and thus far it's performed extraordinarily well."

His system design for PITP was based around sixteen M3D cabinets left and right of the stage. These were augmented by MSL-4s for front fill and outfill, plus front fills of MSL-2s and a further eight M3Ds and six Meyer cardioid subs flown from the back of the front-of-house tower.

Projecting the high end out to around 160 meters was a pair of SB-1 Sound Beam parabolic high frequency units flown alongside the top of each of the M3D arrays. Says Frengley: "They gave us that vital far field coherence - and helped us to keep the need for delay arrays to just four positions down the park."

The M3D's projection abilities combined with the Sound Beams to create vocal intelligibility all the way to the back - a highly impressive result that had audience members praising the sound quality from as far as 400 meters from the stage.

Canegreen's delay system consisted of two down field towers, each with six MSL-4s, and then wider left and right screen delays, each with two MSL-6s, two DS-4s, two MSL-4s and one Sound Beam.

Outfield fills covered people sitting at the arena fringes with two MSL-4s a side. Further down the field was a V-shaped pair of giant LED video screens 340 meters from stage, flanked by a cluster of two MSL-6s and two MSL-4s. Both the audio and video were delayed to synchronize for the audience at that distance. Finally, at 360 meters out, were left and right towers with four MSL-4s apiece.

Canegreen's audio team included crew boss Pete Hughes, assisted by Jessica Dolphin out in the field. At front of house were Roger Lindsay, 'Privet' Hedge and Jerry Ede assisted by Luther Edmonds. On stage were Mick Tires, Chris Peters and John Lewis on monitors, assisted by Ryan O'Neil. On the line systems were Richard Martin and Graham Devonish. Stage system one was run by Branner Reese and Kevin Hooley, with Miles Marchmant and Paul Knight on stage system two and Paul Macorley on stage system three.

Commented Roger Lindsay, Canegreen's 'babysitter' engineer for the show: "This is the first time I've ever heard or worked with Meyer's new M3D system. We came in, ran it up, and it's the first system I've heard in years where we didn't actually have to mess with it. I'm a jaded cynic — we've all heard the sales pitches from every manufacturer saying this is the latest big thing. But I can't remember an outdoor show where we've all walked in, turned it on and literally just gone 'wow!'. We walked to the back and it got better as you went further. It's a terrible cliché to say it, but it did work straight out of the box; it sounded great. It means we've got somewhere else to go now — a different flavor. Everyone so far who's come up and listened to it has had the same feeling. I have to say I'm impressed."

August, 2001