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Capital Sound uses Martin Audio’s MLA for South Facing Festival at Crystal Palace Bowl

With the new month-long South Facing Festival, music has returned to London’s Crystal Palace Bowl. The site’s revival has been led by The Crystal Palace Trust after securing substantial funding.

The stage this time was built on a floating pontoon - in front of the original stage - and the venue capped at 5,000. Marcus Weedon was the Festival Director, Loudsound provided site and production logistics. Capital Sound deployed Martin Audio’s MLA technology. Capital project manager David Preston and his team worked alongside production manager Julia Bruns.

But installation was far from straightforward. With the height of the top of the bowl only two metres below the trim height they were able to achieve, Capital needed to fly the array almost flat in order to ensure sufficient coverage at the back. “This meant striking a fine balance between achieving even coverage in the audience area without overshooting and creating offsite noise issues”, notes system tech Richard Wonnacott. “With the MLA’s Hard Avoid feature in Display, we were able to map the bowl and also apply this function to the areas outside the main bowl, giving us the potential to achieve maximum possible SPL in the audience areas whilst keeping the local residents happy.”

Given the constraints of building on a floating platform, they also needed to arrange the sub placement that would not compromise the sound, as David Preston explains. “Ordinarily the subwoofers would have been arrayed across the front. However, because it’s a floating pontoon we were unable to do this, and instead went for a Left/Right end fire design, with two stacks of three MLX on each side. By controlling the low end we could make it boom while satisfying (sound control consultants) Vanguardia and the local council, and staying within the conditions of the licence.”

Each PA tower comprised nine MLA elements and a single MLD Downfill box, with eight of Martin Audio’s DD12, using differential dispersion technology, acting as front fills. There was a single outfill stack at stage left, comprising four MLA Compact enclosures, aimed towards the bar areas for additional coverage behind the PA. Running at levels of 96 dB(A) over 15 minutes in the bowl they met the requirements of the artists’ sound engineers while satisfying the offsite measurements of Vanguardia.

(Photos: Martin Audio)

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