DM AUDIO CELEBRATES EUROVISION'S 50TH

Stockholm-based DM Audio successfully completed its sixth Eurovision Song Contest at the Sports Palace in Kiev (which was celebrating its own 50th anniversary).
The team (led by Lars Wern) decided - in conjunction with the Ukraine set designer Mykhailo Illko, lighting designer Per Sundin and the multicamera director Sven Stojanovich - to reconfigure the front of the stage as no provision had been made for a monitor pit. The pit was covered with a transparent perspex mesh and all monitor speakers - even the concealed ones - were perspex versions of the Martin Audio LE12JB, which DM Audio hold in their rental inventory.
DM used a total of seven enclosures at the front, together with two Martin Audio WSX sub woofers to provide good coverage of the stage.
'Once again it showed how well the Martin LE12JB functions,' said Lars. 'The differential dispersion horn really makes wonders in these situations. In reality there were many artists not using IEM and we could not have made the show without the hidden wedges in the front.'
With many entries using back-up singers, who were positioned far away from the front line, and DM Audio used a total of six additional Martin perspex LE12JB's - with a crew of eight detailed to handle nothing other than the positioning of these wedges.
Augmenting the floor monitors, the Swedish company flew a Martin Audio W8LM Mini Line array system, six cabinets per side, at the stage.
Having solved the monitor situation DM Audio then turned their attention to the speaker system design. 'We decided to bring the whole family of Martin Audio line arrays with us and eventually managed to find some acceptable points for flying the systems,' says Lars.
The front left and right clusters were set up with 24 x W8L speakers (12 per side). 'We did not want to fly extra subwoofers,' he continued. 'The W8L is so powerful that I was able to rely on a 12-box cluster to give us most of the required low end.' However, a 12-speaker hang creates a big drop, necessitating DM Audio to fly the speakers directly from the venue's ceiling rather than the mother truss that was the foundation for everything else.
While the W8L systems covered most of the seating DM Audio needed reinforcement to the sides of the bleachers and opted for the Martin Audio Compact W8LC (12 per side).
As part of the audience was sat behind the front of the stage, eight further W8LM Mini Line Arrays were deployed to cover this section of the bleachers. Finally, two W8C's were used as delays (due to the shading effect of the giant mirror hanging from the ceiling).The whole system was under RANE control.
In addition to the line arrays a further eight Martin Audio LE12JB's were used as frontfills, concealed in the stage design. Finally, 12 x Martin Audio WSX sub woofers were used specifically for special effects.
Lars Wern and Robert Ernlund mixed the show from a Yamaha PM5D RH. Monitor engineers Mats Wennerholm and assistant Philip Jansson worked closely with the artist liaison, Mr Barney© (Barney Gausdal). The wireless control over the speakers gave systems engineer Jan Peterson the opportunity to walk the house and fine tune during the show.
Summing up the production, Lars Wern said, 'The system sounded great - probably a combination of the behaviour of the horn-loaded, well-designed Martin Audio line arrays and the QSC amplifiers which powered it.'