RG Jones Supplies Martin Audio MLA for Unique Henley Festival

	Henley Festival with Martin Audio provided by RG Jones.

Henley Festival is an annual, five-day boutique experience that celebrates the best of international and UK music, art, food, and comedy in a quintessentially British location.

The Festival began as an idea in 1983 to bring music and culture to the town of Henley-on-Thames -- and sound production company RG Jones Audio Engineering has been involved in the five-day, black tie affair almost since the beginning -- fielding Martin Audio PA systems on the various stages for much of that time.

In 2016, the festival again brought high caliber artists from all over the world, attracting crowds of more than 30,000 people to this unique riverside setting.

The formula has evolved along the way, as has the loudspeaker technology, and for the past few years RG Jones has been able to field Martin Audio's award-winning MLA multi-cellular loudspeaker array technology.

Most interest is focused on the Floating Stage (positioned over the River Thames) where Elton John and Dame Shirley Bassey were headlining, while other feature areas include The Bedouin Stage, Pizza Express Stage, while a Spiegeltent structure was erected at the bottom of the site to host Ronnie Scott's All Stars Jazz Band, who played a residency over all five nights.

The Big Top itself not only hosted the Silent Disco but also many well-known names such as Natalie Williams, Jose Feliciano, along with Will Young, Mick Taylor, and Ben Waters, and '80s legends, Shakatak.

Meanwhile, the Comedy Tent (The Salon) featured such names as Al Murray and Nina Conti, Reginald D Hunter, Hal Cruttenden, and Adam Kay.

Martin Audio systems were out in force at all locations. Given the nature of the Floating Stage, RG Jones fielded four hangs of eight MLA Compact, with a further four elements on each side as infills, underpinned by six MLX subs on each side.

The design for The Big Top included left-center-right hangs of Martin Audio W8LM mini line array.

Over in the Salon, there was a ground-stack of five additional W8LM's on a pair of WLX subs, while Ronnie Scotts Bar saw the deployment of four flown MLA Mini elements and an MSX sub, with a pole-mounted MLA Mini system on the Bedouin Stage.

Speaking of the value MLA brings to a quirky site such as this, RG Jones production manager Jim Lambert, stated: "This was the first year in the festival's history where the local council had imposed noise restrictions, written into the license document. Although not particularly different to any other festival noise limits the closest residential dwelling was a matter of a few hundred meters from the main stage, so careful design and control were necessary."

"It was vital that the sound stayed where it was wanted and we were more than able to meet the council's limitations and yet still provide all the sound engineers with sufficient headroom. Another Henley veteran, Simon Honywill, who is familiar with all the quirks of the site, added: "Floating Stage is a hard location to cover because it's only 130' deep but about 650' wide! Speaker positions are not ideal so MLA Compact is sufficiently flexible to provide excellent coverage and achieve a great sound."

Helping to maximize the sound was experienced system engineer, Mark Edwards. He reports that he produced a slightly stronger hard-avoid optimization than normal. "This was because the PA hangs a few feet or so upstage, but that was more for the stage. It enables us to get a higher gain-before-feedback threshold. We also used cardioid subs to keep the sound on-site rather than spill across the river."

He added that as the support stages weren't in operation while the main acts were appearing, other thresholds weren't relevant. "However I did use a couple of tricks we've developed for containing offsite levels at other events just to be sure," Edwards admits. "Controlling the throw of the outer hangs was particularly important."

Lambert also had other issues to contend with since increase of the ticket allocation (to include a general admission) meant that the audience could also view the Floating Stage concert from screens positioned in other venues along the riverfront. This meant audio was tasked with covering a much larger area without affecting the newly imposed offsite noise level.

Summing up, he said, "All sound technicians commented on how natural MLA sounded and what a joy it was to mix on."

And Suzanne Yeates, the festival's event and artist manager added, "Once again RG Jones delivered a fantastic all round service, and as Jim says, with the added issue of prescribed noise limits this needed careful management. Mr. Lambert and his team were as exemplary as ever."