MLA ventures outdoors to hit the beach
Published: ASIA
TAIWAN: The Hohaiyan Rock Festival is a free-to-attend event that has been held on Fulong Beach in Taipei annually since 2000. The city government, which organises the festival, contracted MSI Japan Taiwan to supply the audio solution for the 17th edition of the concert and saw the A/V consultancy deploy Martin Audio’s MLA loudspeaker array in what was the system’s first outdoor use in Taiwan.
A total of 19 MLA units were flown on each side of the stage as well as an MLD Downfill, while an additional six MLA elements and two MLD served as side-fills. Catering to the lower frequencies were left and right clusters of six flown MLX subwoofers with another three ground-stacked in a cardioid pattern.
‘We arranged the audience area 200m from main stage, but the organisers also requested that the entrance gate, which is located 400m from the stage, needed sound coverge aswell,’ Mr Watanabe from MSI Japan Taiwan recalled. ‘It was a simple and easy mission for MLA, but we were concerned that the sound would spill onto the second stage, and might interfere with the show. So we set a “hard avoid”, a preset in the display software, which solved the problem immediately.’
MSI Japan Taiwan had plenty of previous experience in using the MLA solution for indoor applications, but with this being an outside event and with many of the country’s top artists performing, additional planning was needed to take external factors into account.
‘First of all, we had to set the speakers at the lowest level because of the sea wind and although the temperature was variable, we needed to set the parameters to keep MLA’s performance sustainable,’ explained Mr Watanabe. ‘Thanks to its adaptive properties, there was no effect from the weather at all.’
There were reportedly initial concerns from the local crew about MSI Japan Taiwan’s design for an audio solution without a delay tower, but these fears were soon put to rest. ‘Once it was set up they were really surprised by the high performance, and also the effectiveness of the hard-avoid settings,’ said Mr Watanabe. ‘The festival was a grand success, and MLA is already being spoken about for next year’s event.’