The latest edition of Clockenflap, Hong Kong’s biggest and longest running outdoor music and arts festival held recently at the Central Harbourfront, was supported by a main stage system deployed by MSI Japan that was headed by Martin Audio MLA arrays in support of performances by Pulp, Joji, Yoasobi, Caroline Polachek, IDLES and many others.
The system was designed by MSI’s Bunshiro ‘Bun’ Hote, Yasuhiko “Yasu” Watanabe and Yukio “Eddie” Tanada, who explain that one of the biggest challenges faced at the event is noise control, and more speficially limiting the audio coming out the back of the stage, where there are several government buildings, residential properties and hotels. In past years there were complaints from residents, so MSI put its primary focus on rear rejection.
To meet this criteria, the design duo chose to deploye MLA with its DISPLAY control and optimization software. And by further adding a full cardioid subwoofer array, using 30 MLX enclosures, they calculated that they could achieve close to 30 dB rejection at the rear of the stage.
The two hangs of 15 MLA arrays and a single MLD downfill box were addressed by DISPLAY, the software enabling MSI to help control the coverage. At the same time, by utilizing the “Hard Avoid” feature at the rear, they could minimize audio on the stage, and therefore also from the residents behind the stage. Limits were also placed at the edges of the audience areas to ensure added focus on placing audio where it needed to be without escaping across the water to the Kowloon side.
Clockenflap sound director Sem Cigna, who has been working on the event since 2016 and has seen several sound systems on the main stage over this time, used MLA for a Gwen Stefani concert in Hong Kong in 2019 as well as the Rugby Sevens, and familiarized himself with MLA in a similar configuration to this show (although with slightly fewer subs). “I was able to experience just how MLA could reduce the audio outside the audience area without losing any impact for the audience itself,” Cigna says.
He’s worked alongside the event’s production manager, Peter Gorton, since 2019, and it’s the latter who is ultimately responsible for managing the noise thresholds, which all six stages have to conform to.“When the venue moved from Kowloon to Central [Hong Kong] several years ago, one of the biggest requests from the Government was to manage the noise for the residents,” Cigna explains.
They subsequently endured several years of trial and error, testing different options, from hiring cranes to fly and evaluate different line arrays on site to craning in large sandbags to sit behind the subwoofers in order to block sound from the rear of the stage. Noise levels are monitored at four points around the city, three in the central region and one across the water in Kowloon.
