World Youth Day, first celebrated in 1985 at the invitation of Pope John Paul II and held every three to four years in a different country, took place in 2023 over six days in Lisbon and attracted more than 1.5 million attendees, with the primary location in riverside Parque Tejo supported by a sound reinforcement approach utilizing L-Acoustics K Series in a design and deployment by Pixel Light.
Headlining the event, Pope Francis delivered a message from a 40-meter-wide and 24-meter-high stage conceived by architect João Matos. For Pixel Light, the challenge of creating a sound system that could encompass an audience spread over 54,000 square meters while maintaining speech clarity was familiar.
An L-Acoustics rental partner since 2016, the production provider has a solid foundation of collaboration on major projects such as the Eurovision Song Contest 2018. For World Youth Day, explains Pixel Light system engineer/sound designer Rafael Pereira, “Our goal was to achieve a minimum of 97 dB SPLA, considering the outdoor environment, wind, and the sheer number of attendees. Soundvision was instrumental in helping us predict coverage and balance the SPL across the entire audience area.”
“I believe we used every available piece of L-Acoustics equipment in Europe,” adds Sérgio Antunes, project manager for World Youth Day. “This decision not only met our needs but also significantly contributed to the project’s resounding success.”
Pereira broke up the space into more than 72 parcels of 5,000 to 10,000 square meters, each with its own screen and sound system. “I never thought it would be possible to cover a space like this with just 109 towers,” he says. “I decided to try modeling it in Soundvision anyway, and I couldn’t believe it. It was possible. I used this 3D Soundvision model to show the client how it could be done, which helped convince them to award us the project.”
In all, Pixel Light deployed 1,100 L-Acoustics loudspeakers both on stage and over 109 delay towers. This assembly included 128 K1 line source units, 272 K2, and 132 K3. Additionally, 528 Kara modular line source loudspeakers were deployed along with 24 dV-DOSC. The system was driven by 196 LA12X and 93 LA8 amplified controllers. Pixel Light built a network of audio and control systems using 103 kilometres of fiber and more than 300 switches to connect everything together.
Pulling from a pool of several different L-Acoustics lines, Pereira prioritised even tonal balance and SPL with the objective of providing speech intelligibility in the speech rang: “I was limited to one LA-RAK per delay tower. Taking this into account and to facilitate load-in/load-out, I created five varying types of arrays that included four K1 over six Kara; eight K2; 12 Kara,12 K3; or four V-DOSC over six dV-DOSC.”
It took a team of 24 people and six days to fly the sound system. Two days were required to set up the network, and then two more days were used for tuning and rehearsal.
“From the onset, we knew this project was destined to be colossal in size, but the final outcome surpassed even our wildest imaginations,” concludes Antunes. “Our dedicated team ensured the best possible coverage, delivering an unrivalled audio experience that resonated with every single one of the 1.5 million attendees. From the start of the event to its conclusion, the feedback from the production team was nothing short of positive – not a single audio complaint was registered.”
