Martin Audio WPC Tames Seafront Noise At Brighton's Glorious Day

A Martin Audio WPC system supplied by dBS Solutions balanced high-impact sound with strict off-site noise control at the Glorious Day festival on Brighton's Hove Lawns, where a capacity crowd enjoyed headliners Groove Armada, Jocelyn Brown and DJ Todd Terry in a sensitive residential setting.

The scalable rig comprised main hangs of 10 WPC per side, underpinned by a castellated line of 10 SX118 subwoofers in a cardioid configuration to rein in spill. "Hove Lawns on the seafront is a very long, thin area with the beach to the audience's left and rows of flats and shops along the road to the right," described Chris Bogg of dBS Solutions. "The nearest residence is in line with one side of the stage, at a distance of only 60m. Fortunately, the Martin Audio broadside cardioid subwoofer array is fantastic at being able to control noise off to the sides, and we were able to use Hard Avoid features within the software to dramatically reduce noise behind the main array."

A further challenge was an 80m-long site bordered by residential and commercial properties along one flank, demanding precise delay placement. "We had two MLAC delay systems along that left-hand side happily firing almost across the audience and out towards the sea," Chris continued. "The city-facing delay was angled in more than you ordinarily would, specifically to keep those high frequencies from spilling beyond the boundary of the site."

To optimise coverage and containment, the team used Martin Audio's DISPLAY software to generate and compare multiple prediction scenarios, working closely with the local noise control team to stay within stringent off-site limits. Reflecting on the approach, Chris added: "Our journey has always been towards being able to do our biggest work, which is the festival work, and to be able to optimise the systems - and I think Martin Audio do that better than most. They are the originators of that process, level of control, and scalability."

The broader Wavefront Precision platform's scalability also proved valuable for the rental provider. "One of the major things for us when comparing Martin Audio against other products on the market was the scalable resolution," noted Chris. "As a rental company, I can own lots of amplifier racks; one day I can deploy them in a one-box resolution for a premium audio system, and the next event, if we don't have off-site noise problems, I can deploy it in a two-box resolution and use those amplifiers on another site."

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