When acclaimed Latin American musician Juan Gabriel had to interrupt his U.S. “Volver 2014” tour for two weeks, his engineering staff prevailed upon 3G Productions to switch over to a Martin Audio MLA system for the remaining arena dates.
“The other system was working just fine, but Juan’s front of house engineer, Rodrigo Lopez, had attended an MLA demo in Mexico and was really interested to see how it would perform,” explains 3G system engineer Manny Perez.
Gabriel, a singer/songwriter who’s sold over 100 million albums, resumed the second leg of his sold-out tour at American Airlines Arena in Miami, which also presented some challenges.
According to Perez, “As soon as I walked into the arena, the staff expressed concerns that they’d been having trouble covering the top rows of the nosebleed section for the last few shows and had to provide refunds. We assured them that we had it covered and the show would sound great everywhere.
“Then we put the MLA system up and tuned it really quickly even though it was a big rig designed to provide 270-degree coverage. Rodrigo, the band’s music consultant and I all walked the room from top to bottom and front to back, and there were absolutely no problems in terms of coverage and balanced sound.”
The 270-degree system for American Airlines Arena consisted of a main hang with 32 MLA and 4 MLD; side hangs with 36 MLA Compacts; a third hang with 24 MLA Compacts; 10 ground-stacked MLX subs, and 4 DD12s on the front of the stage for front fill to the first six rows.
“The ratio of MLX to the rest of the system seems a bit light,” Perez notes, “but Rodrigo didn’t want a bass-heavy mix for the show because of all the acoustic instruments and high end frequencies. Also, we were using the new two-way DD12 powered speakers from Martin Audio for the first time and they’re really good. I would usually have to do a lot of cleaning up with EQ because they’re positioned so close to the subs, but they didn’t need a thing. The DD12s throw further than we needed them to and were more than perfect for what they had to do.”
Rodrigo Lopez adds, “For me, it’s definitely the best speaker out there with more control of the sound and how it projects to the audience. The system provides the same amount of sound pressure and coverage from the front seat to the back with correct phasing throughout the arena.
“It’s been perfect for the tour,” he continues. “The audience hears exactly what I’m getting out of the console. It’s challenging with Juan Gabriel because he’s playing with a lot of Mariachi and there are a lot of acoustic instruments that don’t have as much power. But with MLA, the audience can hear all of those instruments clearly, as if the musicians are playing right in front of them.”
Perez concludes, “I like the MLA’s clarity and imaging which is amazing when you pan the percussion and keyboards left to right. The speakers sound 30 feet wide where the sound moves across the space. The high end and high mids for vocals and snares are so clear; you can really hear the sizzle of the snare bottoms and high hats.”
Other key components in the system include an SSL Live and Avid Profile consoles for front of house and monitors (respectively), LM44 Lake processing, Smaart 7 software, Shure UFH-RD wireless systems and DPA microphones.