Sound By Design was recently chosen to provide sound for the 4th Annual Russian Winter Festival in Trafalgar Square. This Festival is a free event offering a taste of Russia to the citizens of London with a varied programme of traditional and contemporary music. It marks Russia’s “Old New Year” according to the Tsarist calendar which was used prior to 1917, and which is still celebrated in Russia in mid-January.

With an expected audience of over 10,000 and tight noise restrictions around the perimeters of the site, System Engineer Dave Shepherd chose to use two main hangs of eight Meyer Sound MICA line array with six 700-HP sub-bass units placed in a cardioid array under the stage, supplemented with UPA-1P front-fills. The system was kept under control with a Meyer Sound Galileo 616 system processor on a wireless network enabling monitoring and tuning from a laptop at front-of-house.

A Digico D1 was chosen for monitoring duties, taking care of 16 wedges, side-fills and in-ear monitors. With 15 bands taking part in the festival varying from ballet to rock the total channel count came to some 64 lines from stage!

Out front, Griff Hewis chose to go down the traditional analogue route with a Midas Heritage 2000, as he had many visiting guest engineers whose first language was not English. A Midas Venice sidecar was used for playback and presenters and outboard was of a standard fare with a sprinkling of DBX, Drawmer, TC and Lexicon.

Noise restrictions were in force throughout the event and Sound By Design had to liaise closely with Westminster Council to ensure that the limit of 79dB at the perimeters of the site was adhered to. The limiters in the Meyer Sound Galileo control software (Compass) proved highly useful for this task!!.