Meyer Sound News : Meyer Sound a Hit at Show Time at The Stadium

IMAGES

Meyer Sound a Hit at Show Time at The Stadium

CARDIFF, WALES, UK (October, 2001) Music typical of The West End and Broadway found its way to a rugby stadium in Wales for a day of song from stage shows past and present.

The occasion of the event, which was attended by an audience of 20,000 people, was to raise money for "Red Hot AIDS" in conjunction with the BBC charity, Children in Need, to provide assistance to children suffering with AIDS.

Showtime at the Stadium, promoted by BBC Wales, recently held at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, featured established performers such as Charlotte Church, Midge Ure, Petula Clarke and Heather Nova singing songs performed specifically for the event. A number of youth oriented bands performed as well, notably Atomic Kitten (recently number 1 in the UK) and Steps who recorded a new song especially for this years' fundraiser. Additionally, a "house troop" of 40 dancers (all with wireless mics) backed by full orchestra and 12 pit vocalists performed excerpts from West Side Story, Annie, Guy & Dolls, Mamma Mia and Carousel. The complete cast of the touring production of Miss Saigon also performed three numbers.

The expansive system, provided by Sound Hire of Sutton near London, utilized a variety of Meyer Sound self-powered Concert Series products. Richard Liénard, owner of Sound Hire designed the system to cover the roughly "U" shaped seating area. "Having visited the stadium and reviewed the plans, I decided to tackle the sound design by splitting the space vertically, essentially covering it with two different systems. The M3D Line Array Loudspeaker were used to cover only the arena floor and first tier seating, as I didn't want energy to reflect from the roof and unused rear seating. Delay clusters of flown MSL-10 Horn-Loaded High-Q Loudspeakers (conventionally amplified) and MSL-4 Horn-Loaded Long-Throw Loudspeakers covered the upper two side tiers." Precise directional control was achieved delivering sound exactly where needed keeping reverb and reflections to a minimum.

Since the stage was situated under the sliding section of the roof, the main system had to be flown within ground supported scaffolding towers. One of the challenges faced in the design of the system was that the design of the stage placed the main left and right sound towers 55 meters apart. Seven M3Ds were flown in each of the left and right main towers. Pairs of MSL-4s were incorporated to cover the extreme outside edges. Two M3D were suspended from the stage truss as a center fill system. The controlled coverage of this system proved useful due to the fact that the center fills were positioned about 10 meters behind the main arrays and directly behind the orchestra. Liénard commented, "The coverage of the M3D system was just as we wanted, we were able to achieve even SPL from front to back. Standing on the lower-back seating tier, the distance to the array seemed to be much closer than it's 150 meters."

There were a total of six delay clusters (three per side) the first two left and right pairs consisted of one MSL-10A with two MSL-4s hung underneath. The third delay pair comprised two MSL-10A and two MSL-4s. The precise horizontal coverage of the MSL-10s allowed Liénard to accurately aim the speakers to cover only the designated seating areas.

All in all there were over 200 lines run to the FOH position with 144 active splits for 80 monitor channels and the feeds for BBC Wales. Jerry Eade manned the FOH position assisted by Erik Loots. Colin Partridge was the SIM/System Engineer. Stewart Chaney handled monitoring, with all radio comms, in-ear monitor and wireless mics being taken care of by George Hogan.

Liénard concluded by saying, "Everyone commented on the high sound quality and in particular the full sound of the orchestra. It was great to have the tools for the job at our disposal. This concert demonstrated that both vertically and horizontally segmented systems could be combined to obtain optimum results in complex environments. Also, having what I believe are the best engineered loudspeaker products in the world certainly helped as well."

The show was broadcast live on BBC Radio 2 and is also scheduled as a Christmas TV special for this year.

November, 2001

FEATURED PRODUCTS

M3D

MSL-4