Large-scale rock festivals returned to Japan this year with Japan Jam 2023 held over Japan’s Golden Week holidays to showcase the best rock music performed by domestic musicians. Artists represented alternative, indie, metal and other rock music genres, with the festival seeing a record number of participants.

Chiba City Soga Sports Park, where Japan Jam takes place, is surrounded by heavily populated residential and commercial areas and so with a higher SPL event emphasis needed to be placed on tight noise control, to prevent sound spilling into the adjoining neighbourhood. To achieve this, Japan Jam 2023 adopted a far from conventional approach. The promoter – the music journal – is responsible for both this event and the popular festival and again turned to MSI Japan’s Martin Audio MLA.

With ten years’ experience working with MLA, the PA set-up was designed by MSI Japan’s engineering team. Each of the two main stages supported hangs of eight MLA enclosures. In addition, seven MLA delay towers were erected at four locations each, for a total of eight different positions. Normally, delay towers are installed on both wings of the audience area, but this time it was installed only on one side, making it possible to minimise leakage outside the main sound field.

‘We had to control sound escape outside the venue to an unprecedented level, but [with Martin Audio’s Display optimisation software] the results were easy to obtain,’ says MSI Japan Chairman Shuzo Fujii, who was in charge of the system. ‘Inside the audience field the audio experience was completely different to outside the perimeter. It was amazing how much sound pressure and quality was provided to avoid it leaking out. I felt that this outdoor festival was a moment that once again proved the high level of MLA’s controllability.’

This year, MLA played an active role on three stages: Sky Stage, Sunset Stage and Buzz Stage, although the Sunset Stage had to be cancelled on the final day due to strong winds.

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