Far and wide

Loud N Clear’s Longbow system has powered a season of events in Riyadh, discovers Simon Luckhurst

Imagine 70 dsys of continuous entertainment, in 12 different zones, all in all totalling more than 100 events in the span of just three months. If you thought we were talking about Dubai you’d be forgiven; the above slogan actually belongs to Riyadh Season. Starting from the middle of October 2019 and running through till 15 December, it’s part of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s attempt to make Riyadh the capital city for entertainment events in the Middle East as it strives to achieve the 2030 vision laid out by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. Riyadh Season is in fact the biggest cultural and entertainment programme ever undertaken in the country’s history.

The Kingdom has welcomed an increasing number of international artists to perform in recent months. While it was not her first Saudi gig, popular Egyptian singer Sherine Abdel Wahab performed at the Abou Baker Salem in mid-November alongside Lebanese artists Walid Tawfiq and Ragheb Alama to an audience of more than 8,000.

Having worked successfully in the past with the event organiser, Benchmark, Beirut-based live production company Loud N Clear was brought in to handle the audio portion of the Sherine concert and other events taking place at Abou Baker Salem during the season. In recent months, an increasing amount of the company’s projects have shifted to Saudi Arabia, to the point where Loud N Clear keeps a sizeable amount of local stock on hand to cater to last-minute requests. And as one of Beirut’s biggest audio specialists, it’s certainly no stranger to working on events of this pedigree – Guns N’ Roses, Bryan Adams and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are just a few of the high-profile names gracing the company’s portfolio.

‘Benchmark is one of the biggest companies in Saudi Arabia for festivals and we first started working with them quite some time ago,’ recalls Loud N Clear owner, Roger Bou Farhat. ‘They approached us to work on these latest events, not only because of our experience on big concerts, but also because we’re one of the few companies in the region with enough stock to cover concerts of this size.’

Loud N Clear had to accommodate a complicated stage setup with an 80-person orchestra

Martin Audio’s Longbow, the latest large-scale line array offered from the British manufacturer, has quickly become Bou Farhat’s system of choice. With no specific requirements from the client, Loud N Clear was free to design a system of its choosing.

‘Through my experience with Martin Audio, especially the longbow cabinet, we found it to be the most suitable choice for this event. With the entire festival lasting nearly three months and the venue being outdoors, the system had to be able to withstand the elements,’ he expains. ‘Additionally, the sound of the Longbow is very powerful and clear, particularly at the back of the venue where you can hear all the frequencies. Longbow is able to reach right to the back, 80m away, without the use of any delay towers.’

L-R hangs of 12 per side Longbow W8L cabinets formed the main PA. These were augmented with eight W8LM mini line array enclosures lining the front of the stage for front-fill and 24 S218 double 18-inch subwoofers for low end. Four S218s provided side-fill for the 60m-wide venue.

Ragheb Alama takes to the stage

‘Originally, we had intended to use a central cluster flown above the middle of the stage; however, the stage was approximately 40m wide which meant we weren’t able to due to the weight. We added more points to the front-fill in order to solve this problem and I was very satisfied with the result.’

However, it was the stage setup where things started to get complicated. The three artists were backed by an 80-strong onstage orchestra that required Loud N Clear to provide more than 70 DPA d:vote 4099 instrument microphones for audio capture and 80 Shure in-ear monitors for orchestra foldback. A further 50 stage monitors and a combination of Martin Audio LE100s and LE200s were deployed onstage. Managing the setup at FOH and monitors were Midas ProX and Pro9 consoles, together with a DiGiCo SD10 and Yamaha CL5.

A Midas Pro9 at FOH for audio and grandMA2 full-size for lighting

The audio wasn’t the only impressive technical aspect to the event. The entire length of the large stage, which was fully constructed with LAYHER scaffolding accompanied by Super Mega Truss from James Thomas Engineering, was adorned with approximately 800m 2 of ESDLumen 4mm pixel pitch LED screens creating an 8K output, alongside two IMAG screens flown out wide by Dubai-based Resources Stage Technologies (RST).

Novastar 4K processors, a Blackmagic Ultra 4K, Green Hippo Hippotizer V4 media servers and Resolume Arena 7 software served up the video content.

Egyptian singer Sherine surrounded by LE200 monitors

Also tasked with supplying the complete equipment and design for the lighting setup, RST called on a wide selection of fixtures from Claypaky, including Sharpy Plus, Sharpy Wash, Mythos 2, Alpha profile 1500, Scenius and B-EYE K20 models.

‘I was very happy with the setup and would only choose to do something differently if it was demanded by either the technical riders or the venue,’ concludes Bou Farhat. ‘Loud N Clear’s engineers were mixing the majority of the artists, but notable engineers like Assem El Sayed, Yasser Anwar and Nasreddine Haddad that used our setup were very happy with the result of the Longbow.

The feedback was also very positive from our client – they were so impressed that they made the decision to keep the same sound system at this venue until the end of the festival, one month longer than was originally planned.’