OSA Teams With MLA for Oprah's Surprise Spectacular Live Finale

	Photo credit: Brendan Shanley

On Stage Audio (OSA) recently put Martin Audio's MLA (Multicellular Loudspeaker Array) system to good use for Oprah's Surprise Spectacular, a live Oprah Winfrey farewell show taped at Chicago's United Center for 13,000 fans and national TV broadcast a week later.

OSA partnered with MLA launch customer SES (Special Event Services) to provide the most expansive system yet assembled in the U.S. The array included 99 MLA, 11 MLD downfill enclosures, and 26 MLX subs for front and side fill, center hall and back hall arrays, with 12 subs flown and 14 ground-stacked under the stage.

Under the direction of Harpo Studio's audio production team, the show featured Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Beyoncé, Patti Labelle, Jamie Foxx, Alicia Keys, Josh Groban, and Rascal Flatts. ,p> OSA's multifaceted challenge was achieving even and balanced coverage for the "surprise" guest of honor Oprah Winfrey, guest artists, the onstage orchestra and choir, and the high-profile celebrities in attendance--along with a coloration-free sound for the broadcast remote mix in the large sports arena which is home to the Chicago Bulls and Blackhawks.

Typical of most large sports venues, the cavernous United Center has several tiers of steel and concrete designed to amplify the crowd sounds and reflect them downwards to the playing area, not an ideal setting for audio production.

Besides, the epic scale of the event, time was a critical issue because the Bulls were in the NBA playoffs and with just over a day for load-in and setup, Jim Risgin, OSA vice president, crew chief, engineer and system tech for the event, says his tem "had to be ready for any and all scenarios. We had to be fluid and react quickly to a show that because of its scale and complexity, was a moving target right until the moment it started, which in large part explains why we went with MLA."

Expanding their system with additional MLA enclosures from SES, OSA worked closely with MLA system designer Jason Baird, technical liaison Ferrit Rowe and Martin Audio's North American sales director Rob Hofkamp to come up with a system that, in Risgin's words, "could go up in a very short time, and deliver the goods for the show without sacrificing the audience experience even though it was being taped for TV.

"We chose MLA," Risgin continues, "because of its exceptional pattern control and off-axis rejection so we could keep the sound exactly where we wanted it to go. Even with this large a system, it didn't take us that long to optimize the setup. We only had to fine-tune the vertical pattern coverage of the main and side clusters via software a few dB to dramatically reduce the reflections in the upper levels of the arena without physically touching a cabinet.

"That, plus rotating both clusters five degrees allowed us to cover the runway off the main stage and the smaller center stage where many of the guests gathered without adding a separate PA as point source, which would have been a problem because of television."

John Harris, of Music Mix Mobile, who recorded the musical elements and live line mix for the TV broadcast, was glad to avoid excessive room coloration and capture the excitement of the audience while getting "a very nice and smooth room sound."

Chris Rabold, front-of-house engineer for Beyoncé, who mixed one of the evening's most powerful sequences combining choreography, music and vocals for the first live interpretation of her single, "Run the World (Girls)," was also pleased with MLA.

"I was impressed by the system's reproduction and intelligibility of vocal content and its coverage," he said. "The system sounded natural, and true, no matter where anyone with a mic was standing. There's clearly a lot of potential in this system and I'm sure we're going to be seeing more and more of it as we make the rounds in the future."