M3D system over-performs for Adelaide Festival of the Arts and Studio Festi

Il Cielo che Danze (The Dancing Sky) by Italy's Studio Festi was 2006 Adelaide Festival of the Arts spectacular free outdoor event. Performed on & over the Torrens River at Elder park, this massive aerial theatre included airborne dancers, giant painted helium balloons, flying pianos and ships, teams of cyclists - and that's just the tip of the iceberg! Studio Festi are internationally acclaimed for their extraordinary staging of large scale outdoor theatrical events, most recently the opening ceremony in Turin for the Winter Olympics. This technically challenging show employed six power boats, three cranes, 17 power generators, 65 technicians, 2,000 cubic metres of helium and 100 performers.

Coda Director Michael Wilkie was engaged as Sound Designer, and chose an innovative approach to the considerable challenges of this event. Click on the aerial photo at top left for a map of the site. To achieve a beneficial acoustic focus for the audio, the north bank of the river and performance area was decided upon to site the main loudspeaker installations. This placed the main sound system 100 metres away from the front row of the audience area. Normally this would not produce a good result, and some concern was voiced from the Studio Festi camp in the pre-production process.

However, predictions performed with Meyer MAPP Online software indicated the M3D line array was well within it's limits for this specification. For the technically interested click bottom left to view a summary of the MAPP prediction. Additional installations of long throw Meyer MSL6 arrays covered the extremes of the audience area. Several towers of MSL4 array delay towers also provided support to the very far field (over 140m from the main system).

On-site, the M3D completely lived up to the predictions. System Engineer Simon Lear was enthused at just how well the system performed, beaming full bandwidth audio effortlessly to it's coverage area. With it's maximum output of 145 dB peak SPL at 1 meter, plenty of headroom remained in the system, and indeed the loudspeakers never approached their limit thresholds. No sub-woofers were required for this show, with the M3D operating frequency range extending down to 35 Hz.

The self-powered M3D speaker system sometimes attracts criticism from commentators due to it's size & weight. This production of The Dancing sky proved however that there is a requirement for a great sounding, directional, full bandwidth sound system with prodigious output in Australia's entertainment market. Competing systems would be hard pressed to match the result.

Visit the Meyer Sound M3D pages for complete manufacturer info.