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MARTIN AUDIO ON A HIGH IN HYDE PARK Capital Sound fields 318 MLA series enclosures at BST for Roger Waters - the largest deployment ever. Now enjoying its sixth year at Hyde Park, AEG Live’s Barclaycard Presents British Summer Time (BST) has now settled into a proven and established formula, since its sound reinforcement partner, Capital Sound, and its premier loudspeaker system, Martin Audio’s MLA, have been fully optimised the sound site-wide. Maintaining the status quo, Capital has rigged the main stage and outfield identically to 12 months ago, with one major exception. Providing the spectacular curtain raiser to the 10-day festival, Roger Waters brought his Us + Them tour to the UK for the first time. Waters had already taken his sonic and visual experimentation to breath-taking levels at Desert Trip in 2016, with the biggest surround sound system ever built. To create maximum impact at Hyde Park, Capital was asked to provide an additional 12 hangs of MLA/MLA Compact on towers positioned through the concourse for one night only. These provided 12-point surround sound effects, at positions set by Loud Sound’s Dan Craig and fine tuned by Roger Waters’ sound team, as
part of the show to give the audience an immersive experience that had them gripped from the beginning as the sound chased around the site. The auxiliary towers added a further 112 MLA/MLA Compact cabinets to the existing total of 206 MLA series cabinets deployed in the Park. With 318 enclosures in total, this was the largest deployment of MLA at a festival anywhere in the world, eclipsing that of Rock in Rio and Glastonbury. That same weekend, Capital Sound was also servicing the Volt/Balaton festivals in Hungary, followed by Kew the Music, which added a further 149 MLA family enclosures in use at the same time. Back at Hyde Park, for the remainder of BST, the main Great Oak Stage is equipped with 2 hangs of 16 MLA and 1 MLD Downfill per side, with 13 MLA and an MLD Downfill for the sidehangs. The sub array consisted of 32 MLX in a broadside cardioid design (21 front facing, 11 rear facing). With 12 MLA Compact serving as front fills all MLA components are operating on the same network. Out in the field, there are 9 main delay towers, 7 comprising 7 MLA and 22
