Based out of the Northeast, sound company Matrix 1 (www.matrix1inc.com) recently purchased 16 Martin Audio W8LC compact line arrays and 12 Martin 2.8S power amplifiers, which was put to use for MTV’s “Earth Day” event, help at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a live show featuring the band Angels and Airwaves (pictured).
The Earth Day concert was held in a hockey arena on campus that presented fundamental challenges described by Matrix 1 founder and owner C.J. Danek as “a fairly wide, short room with a concrete floor and extremely rigged seating with reverberation issues. That plus the MTV people had to set up a 20-foot jib in front of the stage, so we had to work the speaker placement around that.”
The system included eight Martin Audio W8LCs a side with JBL subs, a Midas Verona 480 as front-of-house console, 12 Martin Audio 2.8 power amps and a Yamaha PM5D as the monitor desk.
The hockey rink also required that Danek and crew improvise to find hanging points after a late-night load-in at 9 p.m. the night before the event with a show starting at 4 p.m. the next day. “We had soundchecks at noon,” Danek explains. “And the MTV crew had issues because anytime you run a passive split between front of house and TV, there are always going to be challenges when audio is passively split three ways.
“Plus, the band had racks and racks of samplers with a five-piece in front of that sound,” he continues. “It sounded pristine and it was really loud. We were shaking insulation out of the ceiling.”
For more information, visit Martin Audio at www.martin-audio.com.
