Shanghai’s HongKou Football Stadium was the setting for two nights of music from Mariah Carey and the Chinese debut for a full-scale Cohesion audio system earlier in 2025.
‘Cohesion is our PA of choice for Mariah Carey since Paul [Falcone, FOH engineer] and I initially weighed our options,’ says System Engineer Connor Murray. ‘Most people talk about the power with Cohesion, and the SPL output by weight is surely leading the industry – but that’s not why we chose it; it ultimately came down to clarity, coverage and adaptability.’
Jiangsu RenTian called on Shanghai Akus to provide the PA for the event, who partnered with AirFusion Global to provide a Cohesion audio system that would provide the necessary coverage, clarit, and output for the tour de force performances.
‘I always talk about how the throw of Cohesion, its density, it feels like it’s against the laws of physics,’ adds Falcone, who first experienced Cohesion while mixing Carey’s 2024Christmas tour.
‘We advance the spec as much as we can for one-offs, so we don’t always know what we’ll get, but arriving in Shanghai, the last thing we had to worry about was the PA,’ Murray offers. ‘I walked the venue to listen to every section, and I spent the majority of my time laughing at how clear the sound was in some pretty difficult sections for the audience. The system in Shanghai was set up exactly to the Cohesion standard that we’re used to as if we carried our own PA.’
The main stage system was designed with an end stage configuration with main hangs comprising 16 Cohesion CO12 set LR, and an additional 16 CO12 in side hangs with 270° hangs comprising six Cohesion CO8 each deployed upstage of the side hangs for additional reinforcement at the near sides.
‘Any PA can sound great directly on-axis, but only a fraction of an audience is actually on-axis,’ Murray says. ‘With Cohesion, we can deliver the same show to everyone in the audience. The speaker design centres on phase coherence at every wavelength everywhere in its coverage. We deliver exactly what we want, evenly, everywhere we want it.’
Nine front-facing Cohesion CP218 II+ subwoofers were hung behind the mains in gradient configuration, and offered significant infra rejection directly behind the CO12 arrays. On the ground, nine additional CP218 II+ were stacked left and right in cardioid configuration directly under the aerial main system for further support.
‘I’m so impressed by the entire frequency spectrum,’ Falcone says. ‘The crossover is set so high that it’s out of the vocal range, so I get that clear high end. Maybe with another system, I have to boost my highs, but with Cohesion, if anything, I can pull it back.
‘One of the coolest parts of this PA is how staggeringly good the subs, the lows, and low-mids are. Even if you have that clarity on the high end, it won’t mean anything if you can’t push the low end. I can shake a stadium with these subs. There’s power to spare, and I can push it without distortion.’
A dozen additional CO8 were placed along the stage for front fill, and two arrays of three Cohesion CO10 each were flown stage left and right within the stagehouse for side fill.
‘I typically have a multi-band compressor and use that essentially as an EQ, and I found I did not need that with the Cohesion rig,’ Falcone says. ‘A lot of it was mixed on the nearfields, and it translated very well to the mix itself with just a little bit of system EQ.’
Two additional arrays of six CO12 each were flown as delays on the back of the FOH structure. These were closer to fans in those sections to reduce the number of enclosures required for full coverage and reduce unwanted energy to radiate outside of the venue in accordance with the local promoter and municipality. The audio crew was keenly aware of the impression the shows might leave in Shanghai.
‘We had a huge responsibility since it was the vendor’s first run with this PA,’ Falcone says. ‘They had a lot on the line, and if I had a bad mix or if we experienced any technical issues, it wouldn’t be a great look, but in the end, it was all hugs and smiles. Everyone knew we were using Cohesion for the first time, and we only heard how great it was.
‘Working with the vendors who partnered with Cohesion was such a high point,’ he adds. ‘The seamlessness of being able to use Cohesion in the States and then again in China, I said, “wow, it’s like we’re back on the Christmas tour”.’
More: www.cohesionaudio.com