Northwind Recording appointed Gearhouse South Africa to team up, design and supply the largest ever line array PA system to date to be used in the country, for the 3 day 2009 Mighty Men Conference (MMC 09), staged at the Shalom Farm, Greytown, KwaZulu-Natal.
Comprising 172 L-ACOUSTICS speaker enclosures - a mix of V-DOSC, dV-DOSC, KUDO and SB28 subs - in-the-round show featured a main stage system and two delay rings at 100 and 180 metres respectively from the centre, calculated to cover a sound-field radius diameter of 600 metres.
The event has become an annual pilgrimage drawing people from all denominations and cultural groups within South Africa as well as Australia, UK and USA. The event has rapidly grown over the last five years to what has now attracted over 130,000 people - all of whom needed to clearly see and hear the onstage action.
The 360 degree audio system was designed by Revil Baselga and modelled using L-ACOUSTICS SOUNDVISION software. He chose L-ACOUSTICS to provide crystal clear speech intelligibility and uniform coverage across the vast area, and this also had to accommodate a band. Four hangs of 8 V-DOSC elements each with 2 dV-DOSC downfills were flown, complemented with dV front fills along each of the 4 lips of the stage.
Around the first 100 metre delay ring were 2 hangs of 8 V-DOSC a side on the east/west axis, and 4 flown hangs of 6 KUDOs on the 60 degree lines around that circumference, all rigged on 10 metre high towers.
For the outer delay ring, 4 stacks each with 6 KUDO speakers were positioned at the north/south/east/west/orientations, ground stacked at 6 metres high. Between each of these were 4 delays - of 4 dV-DOSC boxes each - also at 6 metres off the ground.
The 32 SB28subs were located at each corner of the stage, stacked in a cardioid pattern, with 8 firing in each direction.
The show was engineered by Niklas Fairclough owner of Northwind Recording. FOH was co-ordinated for Gearhouse by Adriaan van der Walt.
L-ACOUSTICS amplification was also utilised throughout. The V-DOSC system was powered by LA8 amps, which were all networked, the LAs run over Ethernet and controlled via LA Network.
More information on : www.gearhouse.co.za
Excerpt courtesy of GEARHOUSE SOUTH AFRICA
Photo credit : Patrick Royal