Loud and clear

South Africa has attracted huge crowds to the various fanparks for the World Cup, but the scale of the audience at the 2010 Mighty Man Conference (MMC) in Greytown near Durban far eclipsed these.

Now in its seventh and final year at its original venue, the Shalom Trust-organised event is an annual weekend gathering of Christian men held at Evangelical preacher Angus Buchan’s Shalom farm. It has grown in scale from a few hundred attendees in the early years to a crowd of around 400,000 for this year’s spectacle.

For the third year running, Gearhouse South Africa supplied full technical production, site infrastructure and a series of unique solutions to stage the 2010 gathering. The events company was again working in close collaboration with Shalom Trust’s technical co-ordinator, Nik Fairclough of Northwind Recording, who also mixed the FOH sound. Gearhouse’s project manager, Eyal Yehezkely, oversaw a crew of 28, spanning multiple technical disciplines including audio, A/V and screens, power, lighting and staging.

The project management included internal and on site logistics, surveying and GPS mapping of the site, detailed layouts, design of the crowd seating, positioning of delay towers and structures and producing comprehensive site plans. The primary technical challenge was to ensure that the entire audience could clearly see and hear what was happening onstage from wherever they were sitting.

Having worked on the two previous events should have helped with planning the system. However, the stage and site layout was completely different from the 2009 event. It featured an 'end on' stage and a wide amphitheatre for the audience which radiated outwards at 170° from the stage in a trapezoidal shape. With the most distant crowd members potentially 470m from the stage and a 162,000 sq-m audience area to cover.

Screens were provided by specialist company, LEDVision. Allen Evans, operations manager at LEDVision, proposed using portrait format screens to fully maximise the available viewing space. This concept worked perfectly for the IMAG relay of Mr Buchan's speeches that were the main focus of the three-day event.

LEDVision provided a total of 278 Lighthouse R16 LED panels that were configured onstage as three striking 5 x 10 panel surfaces, each measuring 5.08m x 7.62m (39m2). Positioned symmetrically in the outfi eld - below four of the PA delay arrays - were four delay screens, each made up of 4 x 8 R16 panels, measuring 4.064m x 6.096m (25m2). All screens on site were in the same 4:3 aspect ratio, and provided the audience with a total of 217m2 of viewing surface clearly visible from all points of the arena.

LEDVision also provided a Barco B10 mobile LED screen truck that was parked at stage right and used to make English and Afrikaans signers from inter-denominational fellowship, Deaf Friendly, visible to 300 deaf and hearing-impaired members of the audience. The self contained trailer has its own 18KVA generator and weighs 3.5 tons. It carries a 10m2 S-lite XP10 Barco LED screen.

Gearhouse AV supplied a Barco ScreenPro II switcher, which was used to split the screens into two halves with camera feeds of the band on the bottom and lyrics on the top for the hymn singing sessions. A Panasonic MX70 mixer was operated by members of the Shalom Trust video team under Mr Evans’ supervision. A number of laptops with different source material were also hooked into the system. The screen system utilised Lighthouse LIP processors, 2.2km of high-grade data cabling and had a total combined weight of 21 tonnes.

The live images displayed on the screens were filmed by US-based religious broadcaster, God TV. It supplied nine cameras and the OB unit for the event which was broadcast internationally over its TV network. The TV channel, which regularly features Mr Buchan, also recorded the proceedings for on demand viewing via its website.

While the spoken word took precedence for the weekend, additional entertainment came from The Worship Band. The PA system was designed by L-Acoustics CVE Tom Gordon to meet multiple criteria. Absolutely vital was getting complete vocal intelligibility site wide. The system also had to deliver volume and dynamics, impact and excitement for the praise-and-worship music sessions, plus smooth and even audio coverage across the entire audience area.

Mr Gordon used L-Acoustics Soundvision acoustic modeling software to calculate the optimum system needed to cover the arena. He visited a month beforehand, identified a number of points around the farm that defined the fan-shaped audience arena and the location of the stage, then compared his GPS mapping with Google Earth. They matched to the foot, so he then pulled the data off Google Earth and fed it into Soundvision to come up with a 3D simulation of the audience area.

A total of 120 L-Acoustics line array cabinets and 36 subs were supplied by Gearhouse Audio. The main stage left and right hangs comprised 14 V-Dosc elements per side for the main system with a secondary hang of nine L-Acoustics Kudos per side for out fill. Four dV-Doscs positioned along the lip of the stage acted as front fill. The nine delay towers were arranged in a continuous inner ring of five and a broken outer ring of four. The inner ring was based around two main arrays of 10 V-Dosc, with a central array of six Kudos, and far left and right arrays of nine dV-Dosc completing the ring. The outer delays were all arrays of six dV-Dosc. Seven of them featured between six and nine dV-Dosc cabinets each, the central inner circle tower had six Kudos and the second from stage left inner was rigged with 10 V-Doscs. All the arrays were 10m high apart from the V-Dosc tower, which had a top elevation of 12m. This enabled the sound to be precisely focused to the outer reaches of the field. The shape of the arena was slightly asymmetric, so an extra delay was added to cover the stage left side.

To add some terrestrial rumble, there were 16 L-Acoustics SB28 subs per side ground stacked, and four dV-Subs underneath centre stage. The main sub stacks were configured as two blocks of eight SB28s per side in cardioid mode. The outer stacks were delayed to the inner stacks, for two distinct reasons.

Firstly, the delayed outer stack resulted in a cancellation on stage at approximately 40Hz which, as the centre frequency of the sub band, was ‘probably the most energetic’ explains Mr Gordon. He fine-tuned this by ear during setup, enabling a significant reduction in sub frequencies spilling back onto the stage.

Secondly, the delayed outer stacks had the effect of steering the sub energy outwards, aiding coverage across the very broad site and helping to reduce the ‘power alley’ effect, where LF cancellation zones occur on either side of the central axis due to the difference in path lengths from the listener to the left and right sub stacks.

The understage cardioid dV-Subs were positioned in between the main sub stacks. As far as Mr Gordon knows, there is no official dV-Sub cardioid preset, but he was able to achieve a cardioid pattern by processing the top and bottom boxes separately and adding a small amount of delay to the top front-facing box in relation to the rear-facing bottom one.

He credits the origins of this sub design to Dave Rat, who used a very similar system for the 2009 Coachella Festival in California. ‘He was kind enough to describe his setup in great detail on his ‘Roadies in the Midst’ blog, of which I am an avid follower,’ says Mr Gordon. The system was driven by 36 L-Acoustics LA8 amplified controllers with onboard DSP, and 34 LA48a amplifiers with outboard XTA processing, utilising around 1,750m of speaker cable primarily from Schultz and Mogami with Switchcraft and Neutrik connectors.

Dolby Lake processors were at the heart of the audio control system. These were fed with separate main stereo and sub-bass signals from the FOH console and acted as a master EQ station as well as a matrix mixer/signal distribution unit for the main system. Although time alignment of the system is well within the capabilities of the Lakes, which were used to dial in approximate delay times to the inner and outer rings, in practice the fine-tuning of the delay time for each tower was controlled locally via the amplifier’s onboard or external DSP. This kept the control system as simple as possible and minimized setup time.

The eight-person Gearhouse Audio crew included Adriaan van der Walt who crew chiefed and assisted Mr Fairclough, Mr Gordon who also monitor engineered as well as designing the system, Jako De Wit who was the PA system engineer and tech, and Nkwane Matlala, Nkosinathi Nthuli, Isaiah Malatji, Kashani Malatji and Pierre Slabbert who were all techs.

At FOH, Mr Fairclough used a Yamaha PM5DRHV2, his desk of choice, which he ran complete with a selection of analogue outboards. These were four channels of SPL Transient Designers used on the drum inserts, an SPL de-esser used on the vocals and an Avalon Vt-474sp used in line to drive the main V-Dosc left and right arrays.

Gearhouse also supplied four channels of dbx 160SL compression and two channels of dbx 160A compression, as well as two channels of Avalon 747 EQ. Mr Fairclough commented that the PA's tonal response was excellent, illustrating his point by varying the attack time on Buchan's mic from 5 to 8ms, resulting in a warmer vocal tone. Coming from a studio background, he was impressed to be able to notice such a small difference on an outdoor system, proving that attention to detail in the design, preparation and fine tuning processes are well worth the time and effort.

Mr Gordon mixed monitors on a Yamaha M7CLV2 console taking advantage of all the onboard processing. The band used Shure PSM700 IEM systems, and fine-tuned their own mixes using an Aviom system supplied by Mr Fairclough. Two pairs of Clair 12AM wedges were supplied for guest performers. The drummer had a dVSub for low-frequency reinforcement. A microphone package completed the audio picture with a combination of Shures and Sennheisers, along with Avalon and BSS DI boxes.

The Gearhouse Power team was led by Ronnie Malatji. They provided two 300KVA synched generators for the audio and LED screens, two 100KVA synched sets for the lighting – a combination of Pars, 2K fresnels and i-Pix Satellites were used for a good white light TV ambience – and two 60KVA generators were used for the far outer audio delays and LED screens. A further 60 KVA generators powered the backstage area and crew village.

The power distribution layout was designed by Antony Sackstein with Mr Gordon and Mr Evans. Particular attention was paid to ensure a stable voltage over the long cable runs. Each supply to three delay points was split and run via its own main circuit breaker so one feed could be isolated in case of a problem. The cable size was upgraded from 70mm to 120mm to compensate for voltage drop and 100m runs were used to reduce the amount joints in the cable. About 2,750m of power cable distributed.

It was down to the Gearhouse Structures crew of five led by Attie Van Staden to build the stage structure, which was constructed from a TFL (Total Fabrications) roofed stage, measuring 18m wide by 16 deep, with 15m of headroom. The stage deck was 2.5m high, and combined with wings of 6 x 6m each side for technical positions; this offered a total of 360 sq-m of performance space. Gearhouse Rigging’s crew chief, Vincent Khumalo used a total of 50 two-ton motors on site for flying the roof, LED screens and PA.

The stage was designed to give the maximum visibility for all the viewing angles in the amphitheatre that was made up of the farm’s fields and natural terrain. An open back was incorporated so the stunning scenic beauty of the hills behind became a natural backdrop.

‘We used the same crew who had worked on last year’s event and saw some amazing teamwork that made everything flow smoothly and efficiently. I think we all benefitted from the experience and knowledge gained from working on the site before and this, plus some rigorous preparation beforehand, helped us deliver even better results,’ concludes Mr Yehezkely.

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