Music has returned to the Crystal Palace Bowl, scene of legendary rock shows in the 1970s, with the new month-long post-lockdown South Facing Festival. With the stage built on a floating pontoon in front of the original stage and the venue capped at 5,000, Festival Director Marcus Weedon and site and production logistic Loudsound on side, the event was in safe hands.

Capital Sound used Martin Audio’s MLA to ensured the festival sound would be contained within the bowl, avoiding any bleed to the nearby residential area for the likes of The Streets, Supergrass, Corinne Bailey Rae, Dizzee Rascal and English National Opera.

‘It is hoped that this will become a regular fixture on the festival landscape, which is why we chose MLA, for the close control we could achieve on this site,’ says Capital Project Manager, David Preston, whose team worked alongside Production Manager,Julia Bruns.

But installation was far from straightforward. With the height of the top of the bowl only 2m below the trim height they were able to achieve, Capital needed to fly the array almost flat in order to ensure sufficient coverage at the back. ‘This meant striking a fine balance between achieving even coverage in the audience area without overshooting and creating offsite noise issues,’ says System Tech, Richard Wonnacott. ‘With the MLA’s Hard Avoid feature in Display, we were able to carefully map the bowl and also apply this function to the areas outside the main bowl, giving us the potential to achieve maximum possible SPL in the audience areas whilst keeping the local residents happy.’

Given the constraints of building on a floating platform, the sub placement also needed to be placed to avoid compromising the sound. ‘Since we had artists like Dizzee Rascal and The Streets performing, we needed a lot of low end Preston explains. ‘Ordinarily the subwoofers would have been arrayed across the front. However, because it’s a floating pontoon we were unable to do this, and instead went for an LR end-fire design, with two stacks of three MLX on each side. This worked well. By controlling the low end we could make it boom while satisfying [sound control consultants] Vanguardia and the local council, and staying within the conditions of the licence.’

Wonnacott explains how sub control over the sensitive Stage Right area was achieved: ‘Our biggest challenge was in satisfying the C-weighted threshold at Vanguardia’s remote listening point. As it was the very low end that was causing us most issues, we applied a small amount of delay time to one side of our sub configuration in order to steer the lobe away from the sensitive points and slightly more towards Stage Left. We were very pleased how effective this proved to be and gave us another 6dB of headroom at the mix position.’

Each PA tower comprised nine MLA elements and a single MLD Downfill box, with eight of Martin Audio’s DD12, using differential dispersion technology, acting as front fills. There was a single out fill stack at stage left, comprising four MLA Compact enclosures, aimed towards the bar areas for additional coverage behind the PA.

Running at levels of 96dB(A) over 15 minutes in the bowl they met the requirements of the artists’ sound engineers while satisfying the offsite measurements of Vanguardia.

It all added up to a good solution all round – as Preston notes with obvious satisfaction: ‘I was particularly surprised and happy at just how good the coverage was, and that we achieved sufficient height with the PA to project to the back of the audience area,’ he said, allaying any fears that the sound might not carry. ‘I’m also pleased that we managed to avoid spill towards the residential houses.’

Also welcome was the support of Martin Audio’s Ben Tucker. ‘We appreciated that, as we had not had MLA out on a field for two years because of lockdown,’ Preston adds.

The gig received the thumbs-up from Supergrass lead singer Gaz Coombes, tweeting afterwards that it had been his ‘fave gig in ages’.

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