Orbital Sound handles audio for Mobile World Conference show

Orbital Sound handled audio duties for an evening of live entertainment at the Mobile World Congress 2015 in March.

Organised by global creative agency Imagination and staged at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, the project involved a VIP evening of entertainment featuring over 100 performers including flamenco dancers, hip hop acts, a 50-piece orchestra and a full choir across three central stages and a balcony space, performed in front of an invited audience of 1,200.

The inspiration of Imagination’s head of sound design John Del’ Nero, the show sound was supervised by Seb Frost, and required a technical crew of seven from Orbital Sound, under the leadership of events director Eric Simpson. But the technological stars of the show were a combination d&b audiotechnik V-Series and T-Series, configured as three systems with 12 arrays to cover the large centre arena-style performance area underneath the Palace’s main dome, as Simpson explained:

“We used V8 and V12s for the central hangs, with T10s as fills around the central square stage area. In addition, a T10/T-SUBs combination was put in place for the soprano sound system, at one end of the upper gallery. We also used a complement of B2s and V-SUBs positioned at strategic locations, pretty much wherever we could fit them in. We ran the Yamaha CL5 mixer with Rios and CAT5, dotting the six amp racks around the upper gallery level as there was no space for a single installation.

"It was very much a question of getting everything in place as quickly as possible and then fine-tuning as the rehearsals got under way. With the museum open to the public for much of the set-up days, that in itself was a real challenge.”

Also on the equipment list was a Shure UHF-R wireless system with a total of 31 UR1M micro bodypack transmitters and seven hand-helds, alongside PS1000 in-ear monitors deployed as required. Monitoring duties were performed by d&b Q7 and M4 wedges. Crew communications was also supplied by Orbital, with Simpson selecting a RTS wired system at the core used in conjunction with the Clear-Com FreeSpeak II digital wireless system, both using channel one on the show ring.

http://www.orbitalsound.com