Staged over two days at London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park Stadium ahead of the Rio Olympics, the annual Müller Anniversary Games saw, RG Jones field Martin Audio’s MLA Compact and MLX subwoofers to supplement the house PA. This provided additional coverage and impact to the lower tiers of the Olympic Stadium and at the same time enhanced the low frequencies.

Having worked the event for the past three years along with British Athletics’ Birmingham Diamond League at Alexander Stadium, this was the first use of the MLA platform.

‘MLA Compacts were ground-stacked on a single MLX sub – we were able to hit the back of the lower tier with a help from [Martin Audio’s] Display software, which was great both for LF optimisation and the ability to adjust MLA Compact’s coverage,’ says RG Jones Project Engineer Jack Bowcher. ‘In addition, production took advantage of Martin Audio’s Differential Dispersion technology by placing several DD6s in the conference and VIP suites.

RG Jones again rolled out its Dante based audio system: ‘Utsing a combination of Yamaha QL5, Rio 1608-D racks and Lake LM44’s we were able to receive and distribute audio throughout the stadium. In addition, our recently purchased single mode fibre gave us the capability to integrate into the house fibre infrastructure. The radio mic system is vital for the presentation. We favour the Sennheiser EM-3732 for the infield presenters, allowing them the flexibility to address the audience and liaise with the show caller from the same source. Our RF Venue Optix RFoF kit works across all corners of the site, and we were able to hear them loud and clear,’ Bowcher states.

But there were plenty of other challenges for the sound team. RG Jones needed to work discreetly to ensure their technology did not interfere with the athletes, working with camera and audience site lines, and multiple PA positions, which were not set equidistant from the audience. Consequently, MLA system tech, Mark Edwards, had to create different optimisations for each individual stack as distances between the MLA and audience changed as they worked to obtain clear sight lines for the benefit of the BBC.

Source feeds included Commentators’ mics, Infield Presenters, VT playback, music, stings (to signal the start of all track and field events) and other playback, with RG Jones also providing feeds for the BBC and CT Video OB. All were distributed over single-mode fibre via a new Dante-based audio system.

The sound engineer responsible for mixing all this, and building the atmosphere leading up to events, was Peter Key: ‘We tend to choose appropriate tracks depending on the events and also use sound effects to enhance selected field events, such as javelin whooshes – triggered live to the action.

‘The Anniversary Games is a multi-sports meeting and various factors can affect the scheduled start of events. It is therefore vital that the audio playback equipment is sufficiently flexible to cope with such demands. A large amount of redundancy is built into the system so should something fail a back up option is available.’

‘MLA gave us improved coverage and high impact audio thanks to the MLX subs, and was more compact than the previous system,’ adds Bowcher.

Major Events Director was Terry Colton, while RG Jones’ project manager was Matt Sussex and account manager was RG Jones Director, Andrew Williamson.