Madame Loyal Marseille, a two-day indoor festival that combined theatrical performances and electronic music from artists such as Acid Arab, Vitalic and Worakls Orchestra, took place at the Parc Chanot on 29 and 30 November.
Under the direction of Production Manager Aurel Quiévreux and Audio Engineer/Consultant Probe (Sebastien Jovys) and in collaboration with Concept Group, Alive and Funktion-One distributor for France Solution One, the show featured Funktion-One systems in both rooms.
This included a Vero VX system in the main room (Grand Palais) with a 21 F124 cardioid bass array, Evolution X in-fill and PSM318 DJ monitors and an Evo 7T system with a 14 F124 cardioid bass array and PSM318 DJ monitors in the second room (Palais de l’Europe).
Quiévreux, who has been involved in electronic music events since the 1990s, was keen to elevate the production to bring it in line with the quality and creativity of the Madame Loyal brand and its performers. “When I took over as technical director of the Madame Loyal festivals, I was determined to offer a visual, auditory and artistic experience that was close to the levels I had experienced at events in Holland,” said Quiévreux. “For this last Madame Loyal of the year in Marseille, I asked Probe, whom I’ve known for a very long time, if he’d like to join me on this event, knowing his great technicality and precision.
“We immediately started talking about the constraints of the place and the disruption that could be caused to the local residents with the event taking place in an urban area. Once we’d drawn up the designs and checked the coverage and risks, Funktion-One immediately stood out from conventional line-array systems. For example, for a poorer result we would have had to use twice as many subwoofers with a different system. So, I gave Probe carte blanche to manage the whole audio side of things and to manage the team he needed to make the event a success,” Quiévreux added.
In addition to the collective of French companies, Funktion-One’s Will Wright supported pre-show with system design and at the show with the deployment and operation. The Parc Chanot’s Grand Palais is a large, reverberant space, which gave the audio team one challenge, while the nearby residencies presented another.
Probe commented: “Working in the Parc Chanot halls is always quite the challenge but being trusted enough to involve Funktion-One and knowing that we’d have full support from the brand, both before and during the event, were key to making this work. Madame Loyal offers an engaging spectacle for the audience but the venue acoustics needed to be taken intoaccount to present an audio experience up to par with the whole production. We needed to control our vertical dispersion to avoid hitting unwanted areas like the ceiling and maximiserear rejection to avoid rear wall reflection. This was achieved with the use of the three wide, seven high asymmetrical bass array in a gradient cardioid configuration.”
Funktion-One’s system design software ‘Projection’ was used to model the performance of the system, providing rigging information and splay angles for the crew on site. VX M Beams were used for all four hangs to quickly and safely fly the system on single points with continuous tilt adjustment under load. The system processing was designed and built ahead of time using globcon, making the on-site setup quick and easy.
“Projection was put to great use when testing different deployments,” said Probe. “The alignment values for the bass array it predicted totally matched our measurements on site. Having bands performing involved guest monitor engineers mixing right behind the sub stack, but the controlled directivity allowed for minimum spill, leaving their position relatively unaffected. globcon was the main system control software, providing ease of use and excellent control over 15 D100Q amplifiers fed with Dante and analogue redundancy. I think this deployment exceeded everyone’s expectations and we had nothing but positive feedback about the difference it made.”
Madame Loyal Marseille proved to be an example of what can be achieved with strong direction and positive collaboration. Reflecting on the event, Quiévreux said: “The crew were perfect, both humanly and technically, and the meetings we had together with Probe ensured that the collaboration was smooth and without any unwanted surprises. The fact that Funktion-One supported and monitored the project from start to finish was a further vote of confidence and a huge opportunity for me. Thank you again for this collaboration, which will certainly continue.”
