Manchester, UK-based sound provider VME, which has been providing PA for major boxing events in the nation’s arenas for nearly a decade on an accelerating basis, announced that it has recently increased its inventory of Martin Audio MLA family enclosures to more than 100, making it one of the largest MLA rental stagers in the UK.
VME started out with an inventory of 48 MLA multicellular loudspeaker array enclosures, and such has been the demand from this sector that the rental fleet has now more than doubled. Operations manager Aaron Harvey-Holt says that this is in recognition of the fact that his company is now serving more than 40 events a year for TV transmission through Sky Sports, BT Sports and DAZN, all in major venues such as Wembley Stadium, Wembley OVO Arena, The O2 Arena, Cardiff International Arena and Manchester AO Arena.
Events include the IBF World Heavyweight Championships as wellbouts ranging from David Haye to Tyson Fury, and now to the more recent high-profile Misfits ‘crossover’ series which saw YouTube star KSI going head-to-head with FaZe Temper at OVO Arena, Wembley.
Rigging a system in the round for these events presents challenges. For example, the PA fly position is normally set within a 7-square-meter grid immediately above the ring and configuration can vary from hangs facing out on all four axes to distributed hangs and delays to ensure crowds of up to 20,000 have full coverage.
Harvey-Holt explains the decision to go with MLA: “It’s for the ease of rigging,” he says. “MLA is great for the tight time scale we often have to deliver in as sometimes we don’t have rig days.” Further, he notes that the flexibility it affords is important when they’re working around TV company constraints. Having venue parameters in their library is no guarantee that they won’t have to take new measurements each time and create a different profile.
“This is precisely why we recently purchased another 24 MLA Compact and 20 MLA,” he notes. For the KSI fight alone they fielded 70 MLA boxes and 24 MLA Compact. “We rigged nine hangs of MLA / MLA Compact in total — 25 boxes a side at the stage end for mains, subs and sidefills, with five MLX a side in cardioid flown, behind the two main hangs and three hangs further down the arena for delays at the left, centre and right positions.”
The system has also proved a hit with VME project manager Mikey Greenwood and system designer Gareth Thomas—the latter working alongside Ben Marsh, who is also de facto system tech in ensuring that MLA’s optimization will enable sound to be steered where it’s needed — designing the horizontal projection in CAD, mapping to where the TV interviews take place, and implementing the ’Hard Avoid’ setting on any reflective VIP boxes. This also takes into account the sensitivity of the broadcast mics when it becomes necessarylto deaden the sound around the ring.
“With complex events such as this, having that level of control with MLA is vital,” Harvey-Holt concludes. “It provides massive benefits all round.”
