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Martin Audio MLA keeps residents happy at Clockenflap

As Hong Kong’s biggest and longest running outdoor music and arts festival, Clockenflap was again held over three days recently at the Central Harbourfront, overlooking Kowloon and operating over six stages. MSI Japan were appointed as the production partner for the event’s largest Harbourflap stage, where they deployed a Martin Audio MLA array.

Responsible for the sound system design were MSI’s Bunshiro “Bun” Hote, Yasuhiko “Yasu” Watanabe and Yukio “Eddie” Tanada, who explained that one of the biggest challenges faced at the event is noise control. It is not so much about controlling the noise out the front of the stage as limiting the audio coming out the back of the stage - at the rear of the stage are several government buildings, residential properties and hotels, and in past years there have been complaints from residents. So MSI needed to focus on rear rejection.

They chose to deploy Martin Audio’s MLA, with its Display control and optimisation software. By further adding a full cardioid subwoofer array, using thirty MLXs, they achieved close to 30 dB rejection at the rear of the stage. The two hangs of fifteen MLAs and a single MLD downfill box were addressed by Display, the software enabling MSI to control the coverage for the audience.

At the same time, by utilising the “Hard Avoid” feature at the rear they could eliminate audio from on the stage, and therefore also from the residents behind the stage. Limits were also placed at the edges of the audience areas to ensure maximum focus on the audio where it needed to be, without escaping across the water to the Kowloon side.

Clockenflap sound director Sem Cigna has worked alongside the event’s production manager Peter Gorton since 2019, and it is the latter who is ultimately responsible for managing the noise thresholds, which all six stages have to conform to. “When the venue moved from Kowloon to Central (Hong Kong) several years ago, one of the biggest requests from the Government was to manage the noise for the residents”, he explains. “They subsequently endured several years of trial and error, testing different options, from hiring cranes to fly and evaluate different line arrays on site, to craning in large sandbags to sit behind the subwoofers in order to block sound from the rear of the stage.”

Over the years various solutions were evolved without using sandbags, and this year they selected Martin Audio’s MLA to eliminate the noise at the back of the stage area entirely. Noise levels are monitored at four points around the city, three in Central and one across the water in Kowloon.

Pictured (left to right): Dave McKinney (Martin Audio), Peter Gorton (Clockenflap Production Manager), Yukio “Eddie” Tanada (MSI). (Photos: Martin Audio/MSI/Clockenflap)

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