With a reported crowd of a million people, Rome’s San Giovanni (St John Lateran) Square was the setting for an ‘apolitical and non-denominational protest against the introduction of ‘gender ideology’ in schools’. The company engaged to ensure that the gathering was able to hear the speakers on stage was Cipiesse (Centro di Programmazione Spettacoli), headquartered in Rezzato, Brescia.
Cipiesse partner Marco Riva, was responsible for meeting the event’s requirements as far as sound quality and intelligibility were concerned: ‘As well as the event’s sound reinforcement, our company also supplied the stage and backdrop, support systems and technical staff,’ he explains. ‘This was our first job in the enormous historical square and we had to do the utmost to meet the organisers’ requirements while keeping our work’s impact on local residents’ day to day life to a minimum.’
The chosen sound system was based on loudspeakers from Italian manufacturer, Outline. The design of the system, by Giancarlo ‘Jerry’ Paladini and FOH engineer Raffaella Gatti, was based on measurements carried out three years before with Outline, on the occasion of the huge May Day concert organised by the country’s major trade unions.
Apart from the necessity of ensuring maximum intelligibility for the speakers, another key aspect of the brief received by the organisers, was that the audio system had to have a very low profile. For the event Paladini and Gatti opted for two main stage-side clusters, each with 12 Butterfly, plus two small arrays (each with four Eidos 265 enclosures) on either side for front fill. Two delay towers were also used, each with two hangs: two with 12 Butterfly enclosures and the other two with 12 Mantas elements, approximately 70 yards from the main rig.
Apart from guitar groups accompanying choirs and singers and video contributions, the majority of the sound reinforcement was for speakers at the event (journalists, legal experts, psychologists, as well as Catholic, Christian Orthodox, Muslim and Sikh leaders), so for low-frequency coverage, four Outline Subtech 218 subs installed at the stage and two at each delay tower were more than sufficient. This set-up enabled the company to ensure excellent coverage throughout the large square and in the streets leading into it, with power and clarity up to 150m.
‘We used Outline’s Open Array software simulations, which are always very realistic, so – as usual on events of this scale – we did a considerable amount of work with the software, as we knew the rig would respond accordingly,’ Gatti explains. ‘The delay systems, set according to the software calculations, only needed a very slight tweak during the sound check.’
‘Things definitely went very well,’ Paladini concludes. ‘We saw that the simulations corresponded with reality and, as far as system calibration was concerned, it was mainly a case of plug-and-play, thanks to Outline’s default presets.’
More: www.outline.it
