A high-spec live performance venue, bar and ‘social media experience for music lovers’, the Mida Performance Store plays to China’s love of karaoke, offering an open stage to anyone to share their singing talents with audience of their peers. The concept has proved hugely popular with customer flow reaching 120,000 in the first month of opening followed by 200,000 in the second. On the Store Member’s Day, the queueing time exceeded three hours. Much of the popularity is attributed to the superlative quality of the Genelec audio experience that forms an integral part of the concept.
‘There are vast numbers of people that secretly harbour the soul of a singer but it’s difficult for ordinary consumers to experience a professional environment and facilities,’ says Mida Performance Store Market Operations head, Zhang Hongxu. ‘Our aim is to bring a truly professional experience to ordinary people, to allow all music lovers to enjoy a high-end performance.’
From the outset the brief was for the venue – located in Changsha, the Hunan province capital – to have the best possible sound, both for the audience and the performers. This has been achieved using Genelec 1032C and 4030C loudspeakers for both performers and audience.
The store covers an area of about 50sq-m including the stage, audience area and a bar. After careful consideration of the layout, traffic flow, and the sound spill from other areas in the store, Mida and Genelec China engineers selected a pair of 1032Cs loudspeakers to be flown either side of the stage, supplemented by five 4030Cs to provide extended coverage across the rest of the audience and bar area, plus a further four 4030Cs for foldback.
The goal was to achieve smooth, even coverage across the designated audience area at optimum SPLs. ‘Almost everyone has experienced karaoke with poor sound quality,’ says Zhang Hongxu. ‘Here, it’s a completely different experience. Anyone that cares about singing cares about their own vocals and singing technique – if they are performing in a karaoke bar (KTV) with low quality audio, they can’t hear the detail in the vocal or distinguish between different techniques. However, with the system we have in place, all the subtleties and detail of each vocal performance are revealed, to the great delight of both the performers and the audience.’
Yu Huangliang, the Hunan area champion of the reality TV show, Sing China, has become a frequent visitor to Mida Performance. ‘I have experienced a variety of different performance venues, but once I sang on Mida’s stage, I refused to go anywhere else,’ she says. ‘If you want to enjoy yourself to the full whilst singing, it has to be at Mida. Not only does it have a particularly good audience atmosphere, but more importantly, the amazing sound quality allows people to feel the magic of music at a far more profound level.’
In order to overcome the common challenges of live venues and achieve the goal of ‘singing and enjoying the stage’, considerable thought went into the position and calibration of the loudspeaker system. The main 1032C loudspeakers were flown horizontally in order to fit in the limited space above the stage. The engineers then used Genelec GLM software for automatic measurement and calibration and fine-tuned the results manually according to feedback from the singers. The 4030Cs that provide the rest of the coverage of the audience area were calibrated in order to provide an SPL variation of no more than 2dB across the whole of the listening zone, delivering the same high quality audio experience to everyone in the audience, regardless of their distance from the stage.
Zhang Hongxu is thrilled with the results: ‘Our goal from the outset was to allow ordinary people to enjoy the same experience as professional singers, and let the audience enjoy professional quality sound. We’ve achieved all of this thanks to Genelec, and the popularity of the venue since the store opened proves that the public agrees with us.’
More: www.genelec.com
