Mumbai, India (May 3, 2017)—The first ever Global Citizen Festival India made a serious splash, attracting more than 80,000 attendees to the MMRDA Ground in Mumbai to see Coldplay, A.R. Rahman, Jay Z and Demi Lovato, as well as top Bollywood stars, including Amitabh Bachchan, Farhan Akhtar, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and Arijit Singh. Ensuring everyone could hear every note, Hi-Tech Audio Systems Pvt Ltd (L-Acoustics’ Indian distributor) brought in multiple audio rental companies to provide 200-plus loudspeakers.
Electrocraft, led by Roger Drego, took on the role of lead supplier, working alongside SNL Pro. Additional partners were Delhi-based Audio Design and J Davis Pro Sound of Bangalore. Rajan Gupta of Hi-Tech Audio Systems, explained, “I heard about the project through Manish Mavani of Mumbai-based Sound & Light Professionals (SNL Pro), who is a K1 owner and was working on securing the project, as was K2 owner Electrocraft. However, it became clear that no single company had the inventory and technical expertise required to take on this mammoth job. Collaboration between various L-Acoustics owners was needed. I got everyone talking and we realized that, by pulling together as a group, we would have everything.”
The final system—tuned and calibrated by Michael Wirth, tech support for L-Acoustics—came to a total of 232 cabinets, comprising 36 K1, 12 K1 subs, 40 SB28s, 72 K2, six Kara and 16 dV-Dosc and 54 V-Dosc, all powered by LA8 amplifiers.
“The main hangs were arrays of 12 K1 per side positioned left and right of the stage, with four K1SBs each side hung next to them and 12 K2 per side as side fills,” said Drego. “Front fills were four stacks of four dV-Dosc. Eight cardioid sub configurations were sited beneath the stage, with a further two as sub side fills, each comprising four SB28s, one in each configuration reversed. A dozen K2 per side made up the first set of delays, with three pairs of nine V-Dosc for the subsequent delays, with the final delay being six K1 with three Kara hung below them as down-fills per side, thus ensuring consistent coverage across the entire site.”
“To work on a gig of this scale was amazing,” said Roger Drego. “As a team, we pulled together the biggest and best live audio system that has ever been seen for any single concert in India.”
The Global Citizen Festival is organized by Global Poverty Project. Based in New York, it has been running since 2012, bringing together the biggest international stars to raise awareness of extreme poverty across the world, its goals being closely aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
Global Citizen
www.globalcitizen.org
L-Acoustics
www.l-acoustics.com
