Its 30 years have seen Rock in Rio become one of the world’s most successful music festivals, continually selling out its 700,000 home in Rio de Janeiro. With a line-up that included Queen + Adam Lambert, Seal and Motley Crew, it relied once again on Brazilian rental company Gabisom for its sound systems.

Having served the events for the past 13 years – including those in Lisbon, Madrid and Las Vegas – Gabisom specified a Martin Audio loudspeaker rig for the Palco Sunset stage and a DiGiCo SD7 desk for master console on the World Stage. 

Sound Designer and FOH System Engineer for the World Stage at the Rio de Janeiro event was Gabisom’s Peter Racy: ‘The World Stage was loaded with a massive PA system, which comprised 126 line-array elements, as well as 50 flown subs and 32 ground subs,’ he says. ‘There were several artists who opted to rent a DiGiCo SD7, including Rod Stewart, Seal and Ah-A, while others brought in their own.’

The System was set-up with each of the four main hangs consisting of three columns of flown cabinets – the innermost column was dedicated to a full band mix (drums, bass, guitars); the middle column was a flown sub array, normally linked to the inner column to work as a four-way system for the band mix; while the outermost column of each hang was dedicated to vocals, or any other element featured in the mix.

‘The purpose of splitting the mix in this way was to allow maximum headroom for featured elements, while not having to compete with a full band mix for that headroom,’ Racy explains. ’This concept frees up headroom in the mixing desk’s summing amps and the busses in the system processors, the power amplifiers and in the speaker components themselves.

‘The net result is a massive amount of power and definition. Of course, many guest engineers are not prepared for this and prefer to run the system in either a conventional way, or in another of many possible configurations.’

In order to offer this flexibility, with a choice of several different ways to drive the numerous sub-systems, the routing can become quite complex. This is where the SD7 steps in as the master console to elegantly solve the equation.

‘All the desks used for mixing bands, were fed into the SD7,’ Racy continues. ‘Here, we were able to easily route each input (typically six inputs from each desk) to any of the sub-systems, add or subtract gain as requested and create a down mix of the band and vocal mixes to be fed to delays, front fills, press, broadcast etc.

‘Additionally, we had SD-Racks on either side of the stage connected to the SD7 master desk via an Optocore loop, which transmitted the digital drive lines directly to the power amplifier inputs, ensuring a clean and robust feed to the amplifiers. As a result, our operation became much more reliable, flexible and precise.’

Among the reasons for choosing the SD7 was that it is widely recognised: ‘This means it wouldn’t cause discomfort for guest engineers having to sub into the system,’ Racy says. ‘Both Eder Moura, my partner at FOH, and I were extremely happy with how smooth, clean and reliable the whole operation became. Comments from the guest engineers, press and the festival’s producers gave universal praise for the end result, which was a clean and powerful sound.’

‘I consistently choose the SD7 over any other console because I know exactly what I am getting and where I can go with the mix,’ says Stephen Curtin, FOH engineer for Seal. ‘I suppose you can say that same thing about many of the consoles out there. The difference for me is the flexibility and ease in programming the SD7; it has everything I need to build a great mix with great imaging in the console itself. I do enjoy expanding a bit with the integrated Waves plug-ins, but they are not necessary to get the job done. That, I feel, is one of the biggest differences between the SD7 and the competitors. The SD7 has been a staple for my mixes and has yet to let me down.’

Gabisom’s MLA debut

Gabisom Audio Equipment debuted its Martin Audio MLA system on the Palco Sunset stage, where Korn, John Legend, Magic, Deftones, Steve Vai and Al Jarreau were among the highlights. The purchase, comprising 46 MLA elements, two MLD Downfill cabinets and 24 MLX subs, followed a successful trial at Rock in Rio, US in 2014. At the Las Vegas event every FOH engineer had been complimentary about the system saying it was one of the easiest shows they’d done.

The Rio set-up used 16 MLA enclosures and one MLD per side, along with 32 MLX subwoofers ground-stacked provided the clarity and control without the need for delays to entertain up to 10,000 people. On hand to support the system was Martin Audio Director of Sales, Simon Bull, and MLA aficionado, Simon Honywill, who between them delivered MLA training and system tech support as the Gabisom crew got up to speed with their new toys. ‘As the event took place over two weekends, this worked perfectly,’ Bull says. ‘We were able to help oversee the set up for the first weekend, including the opening press event, carry out the training early the following week, and then hand it over to Gabisom for the second weekend.’

However, although production used physically the same stage as at Rock In Rio USA, the layout was entirely different and the mix position was set 86m from the stage edge. Furthermore, the nearby Street Dance stage was set forward of the mix position, and with a faux brick wall serving as a scenic backdrop it would have caused the sound waves to slap back.

‘Because the faux wall was in front of the left PA array we needed to create an asymmetrical optimisation; both left and right arrays remained consistent up to 40m and then we dropped the left hang array extremely abruptly in the software to the back to avoid the slapback from the wall,’ he said.

Once again the FOH set-up was overseen by Pedro Cluny from Gabisom Portugal, who also doubled as system tech. Bearing in mind that the FOH position was set 86m from the PA, he reported that ‘it sounded like MLA was only about 30m away’.

Gabisom chief engineer, Peter Racy, was another who confirmed the impact created by MLA: ‘For me personally it was a pleasure to hear the pristine sound quality of MLA, and in my opinion that is what made the difference.  In fact, I heard nothing but rave reviews from users of the MLA in Rio.’