The Casper Castival tour recently arrived at the Kindl Bühne Wuhlheide in Berlin for one of a series of six open-air shows around Germany. The location is also home to Martin Audio technology partner Complete Audio, who fielded their premier MLA PA system for the occasion.
‘We are supporting the entire tour but only with lights and rigging, and FOH and monitor desks – the PA systems are usually locally provided,’ explains Complete Audio MD, André Rauhut. ‘Basically [here in Berlin] we were also the local sound provider for our own tour production.’
The venue presents a challenge, since the measurement point for the local authorities is right behind the FOH position – on top of the bleachers. ‘It is always a bit tricky to achieve high SPL levels and then drop down on the top of the audience area in order to get good results at the measurement point,’ Rauhut says. ‘But MLA is perfectly capable of handling this because the system and the Display software can direct sound to where it needs to be and where it needs to avoid, defined as the ‘non-audience’ areas and ‘hard avoid’ zones in Display.’
Complete Audio has produced other shows at this location with MLA: ‘It is always a pleasure to see how well things like the hard-avoid and non-audience areas work, and how much SPL you gain from that in the audience areas,’ Rauhut reports.
The system comprised 11 MLA plus two MLD Downfills per side, with eight MLA Compact enclosures as side hangs. A further 18 MLX subs were used and four MLA Compacts as front fill, close to the audience area. ‘We did not set up a sub arc as we would normally do, because the additional stage in front of the regular stage was built out of scaffolding – and thus there was no place to put subs underneath,’ Rauhut says. ‘We decided to go with a generic LR sub system with six MLX set in stacks of three in front of the stage to avoid the power-alley effect.’
Stage monitoring, meanwhile, consisted of Martin Audio’s classic LE1500 floor monitors, for both Casper and the support acts.
Another highlight of this show was the fact that the popular rapper’s FOH sound engineer is Oliver Voges – the first man to use Martin Audio’s Multi-cellular Loudspeaker Array technology, in 2010 with Fettes Brot. He was pleased to learn that his system techs for the day would be André Rauhut accompanied by Martin Eckert.
Summarising the show, and the performance of MLA, Voges says: ‘Mixing a live show, with a broadcast mix for live radio, and the pressure of sound restrictions at the same time, can a bit complicated. However, the Castival show in Berlin was a blast, as I could concentrate entirely on mixing music instead of fighting for low SPL values – and that’s because the PA set up was perfect.
‘We even achieved a better result with just 18 MLX subs than using 40 subs from a different brand the week before.’
More: www.martin-audio.com
