Martin Audio MLA Goes Above And Beyond At London’s Alexandra Palace

The SPL profile was built over a 5dB spread—using zero at the mix position, +2 dB at the crowd barrier and -3 dB at 275 feet back at the rear curtain.

With ‘hard avoid’ applied uniquely to this back wall the design also utilized the audience and non-audience zones with the appropriate optimization settings—the latter tapering off at the stage (from the drape line to the back wall behind).

Having the 14 MLX subs arranged in a broadside cardioid array allowed Donovan to enter delay times and change the dispersion control—using the software to electronically curve the sound into an arc. “Due to the narrow width of the venue, we were only running at 90 degrees, so this was a pretty tight LF beam,” he explains.

Donovan confirmed the belief of the entire Capital sound crew. “Such was the coherency and lack of distortion, that everyone I spoke to couldn’t believe we were only running at 98 dB. It was exactly the same on the Joe Satriani tour where we were running at 99 dB but sounding like 103 dB. Our ears deceive us into thinking that it’s so much louder.”

Paavo Siljamäki of Above & Beyond’s Group Therapy, states, “[Capital Sound] made one of the most difficult venues in London sound incredible. Never before in my touring career (with over 500 gigs behind me), has the sound in a venue been such a talking point. I had lots of sound engineer friends complimenting us on the way the place sounded,”

Connolly can also reflects on a satisfactory outing. “When we supported Subculture and Come Together at this venue for Lock ‘N’ Load Events two years ago with a hybrid system it worked well. “But the sound was no match for this. When you are not battling against reflections or ambient noise and can aim the sound off the walls, you will always appear to get more volume from the system at sensitive sites like this.

“Everyone agreed, particularly Seamus [Morley], the tour manager, who described the sound as ‘epic’ and confirmed that we had made absolutely the right choice of PA.”

Martin Audio

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