LIVERPOOL CELEBRATES … WITH DBS SOLUTIONS AND MARTIN AUDIO

The City of Liverpool inaugurated a new-look festival over August Bank Holiday Weekend. With the iconic Pier Head—which had been used as the main Eurovision village hub in 2023—as the location, the event took the essence of the former Mathew Street Festival and developed it into something much bigger, under the new name Liverpool Celebrates.

With the Jacksons, Holly Johnson and the Lightning Seeds as the headliners, production company Event Design Co, who were responsible for site management, turned to locally based Martin Audio partners, dBS Solutions, with whom they have worked frequently in the past, to provide the sound reinforcement.

Sensing the scale of the 8,000-cap site the company deployed Martin Audio’s large format MLA multicellular array, flying 14 elements on each side of the stage, with the waterfront as the backdrop. On the flank closest to the famous Liver Building they added 12 Martin Audio WPC outfill enclosures, with a further eight on the facing wing, which required less supplementary sound. For the low frequencies they provided 20 Martin Audio SXH218 subwoofers, designed in a castellated cardioid wall—with the bottom row of 13 front-facing and seven on top, with every second box rear facing. Complementing this, eight WPS filled in the gaps in front of the stage. On the stage itself dedicated XE300 and XE500 floor monitors provided reference sound, along with two TORUS T1230 boxes a side atop an SXC118 sub.

However, system designer James Roberts, dBS Solutions’ operations manager (and project manager in this instance) had not bargained with the storm that ravaged the site on build-up day, and neither had his system tech Danny Clare.

Roberts and Clare both noted the wind strength down on the waterfront. “The storm was coming straight into the Docks, where the stage was positioned. The strongest gust of 70mph was recorded overnight, and so we rigged everything before lowering back down, and then flew it back out next day ready for the first event.”

While Danny Clare could do little to mitigate the swirling gusts, he did make judicious use of the ‘Hard Avoid’ function in Martin Audio’s DISPLAY software. This was because directly behind the stage was a hotel. “It’s also the reason we opted for a cardioid sub array because that was one of the measurement points. We used Hard Avoid to reduce spill on stage and also the spill back of house for the hotel.”

In fact acoustic consultants Marshall Grey had set three measurement points: both behind and at the side of the stage facing towards Liverpool City Centre, and to the rear. “Over the weekend we averaged 71dB(A) which was within guidelines—in fact the wind offsite was louder than our noise spill,” said Clare.

“A couple of the sites they were monitoring from were next to busy main roads, so the ambient level is around 70dB anyway,” observed James Roberts. It was reported by the noise monitor representative that such was the control of MLA that they were able to achieve level boosts between 5-10dB at FOH, over the norm, while still managing to retain the same offsite value.

This meant that The Jacksons were set at around 103dB at FOH. “We thought we might reach 97-98dB to meet offsite thresholds but hitting 103dB without causing issues offsite was a bonus.”

This owed much to the proficiency of Danny Clare, who was MLA-trained when the ground-breaking system was first released, and was completely familiar with the optimisation process.

However, for other techs, such as FOH engineer Mike Wilkinson, who mixed a number of the other acts, MLA was a new experience. Reports James Roberts, “[Mike] has worked extensively [with another premier brand] but when he opened up the PA, he just nodded his head with a smile and said, ‘Yes, this is serious’. He noted that you could physically feel the kick drum play in the PA … it was just so in your face, even with the wind.”

The Jacksons’ engineer was equally happy with the PA. “Interestingly, he was saying that the band’s bass guitar doesn’t really have a lot of low-end energy, because of its tonality, so he boosted it in the main arrays just to fill the gap. Because the PA is so powerful it can do that easily without any hassle.”

The promoters are already looking to next year’s event, noting that the site can support up to 17,000. This offers plenty of scope for future expansion, and the chance to add delay towers.

Added Event Design Co production manager, Josh Keogh: “From the initial planning stages to the final delivery on the ground, dBS executed the project smoothly and successfully while navigating the multiple challenges presented to them along the way.

“dBs’ expertise and attention to detail ensured that the Martin Audio system complemented both the Pier Head and the wide variety of acts who took to the stage over the Festival's four days.

In addition to dBS personnel already mentioned, also on duty were Jon Ash (on monitors) and Theo Tighe and Paul Glave (patch).

Photography by Emma Burnie.