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MTV Dance Surround Sound arena uses TiMax Audio Imaging
MTV Europe recently televised Ireland’s annual Oxegen music festival and also handled promotion of the event’s huge dance venue, branded the MTV Dance Surround Sound Arena. Event production manager for MTV, Ian Martin specified a TiMax Audio Imaging matrix to help configure the massive club sound system and also give the DJ’s a way to play with the surround imaging live during their set.
Headliners over the two nights included international luminaries such as Felix Da House Cat, Eric Morillo and Timo Maas, with supporting sessions from varied and eclectic acts from around Europe. The hall was a vast indoor horse-show arena and was rammed with over 8000 eager revellers for each of the two nights.
The six-channel E-V XLC line-array was supplied by London club sound specialists Systems Etc, under the supervision of Ricky Ramsey. The speaker cabinets were hung inside scaffolding cages dressed to look like six huge oversized studio monitors which arranged in a ring around the dance floor. Each line-array hang was complemented by its own sub-bass array, with some extra subs installed under the stage housing the DJ booth and dance platforms. The system configuration and TiMax programming were handled by club surround sound specialist Andy Carrington and Dave Haydon from Out Board who also supplied the TiMax matrix and showcontrol PC.
The TiMax system was set up with alternate left/right routing for the main mix image which gave a satisfying enveloping surround feel to the room. Also programmed were random-access TiMax cues for multiple dynamic surround pan events with names such as Turbo Revolve, Bounce and Boomerang. These were triggered live by the DJ’s using a MIDI keyboard next to the decks.
DJ booth monitoring was driven off TiMax in surround too, with the six-channel arena surround mix folded down to four channels in the booth. Any time the DJ triggered a surround pan in the arena he would hear a duplicate effect in the DJ booth.
After just a couple of minutes briefing by the system engineers DJ’s were able to make creative use of the MIDI-triggered TiMax pan patterns. Overall their response was really positive, and crowd reaction to the immersive and animated surround sound experience was at times electric.
24th November 2006
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