The bandstand stage at a new leisure development in Rosenthal Park, Lane Cove — a suburb of Sydney, Australia — has been equipped Martin Audio MLA Mini line arrays in a system specification by integration company Xcite Audio Visual and supplied and supported by the manufacturer’s Australian distributor, Technical Audio Group (TAG).
“There was a performance specification written but no brands specified,” explains TAG System Sales Manager Ewan McDonald. “Xcite came to us at tender stage wanting to look at a Martin Audio solution and TAG’s SSE (System Solutions & Engineering) team assisted them in providing a proof of concept based around the MLA Mini system.”
Lane Cove Council earmarked the development on the site of a former car park which was no longer fit for purpose, deciding to convert it into a new 500-space underground car park with a community precinct on top that includes a park with village green and children’s playground, a pedestrian concourse, the performance stage, a restaurant / café precinct and retail (including supermarkets), and The Canopy performance stage that’s equipped with the MLA Mini arrays.
The high-rise apartments flanking the site, however, raised potential problems with regard to sound escape from the stage. TAG first supported the acoustic design with EASE measurements and later produced the DISPLAY optimization files in the proprietary Martin Audio software to mitigate the problem.
“The main challenge was that with the apartments around the park on one side and retail on the other side, we needed to get the SPL to fall off as quickly as possible at the end of the speaker zone,” McDonald notes, achieving this by using the Hard Avoid function in the software.
The main PA is comprised of left-right hangs, each with eight MLA Mini per side joined by two MSX subwoofers each side flown behind the arrays. “The PA is set back so we can hit the front row without any fills, plus it keeps the hangs protected,” McDonald continue. “It was a perfect scenario for MLA.”
The PA is stated to cover the required 130-foot distance on a site measuring 460 feet long by 164 feet wide. “We’ve always liked using Martin Audio and really liked the idea of MLA Mini for this job based on the ability to limit the amount of SPL hitting the surrounding residential areas,” concludes Xcite Audio Visual Project Manager Michael Glass, whose company was responsible for the University of Newcastle Great Hall Wavefront Precision Mini installation back in 2017. “Needless to say we and the client were very happy with the result.”
