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Martin Audio MLA selected for Gilberto Gil’s farewell tour

After a career spanning over six decades, Brazilian music legend Gilberto Gil is midway through a farewell tour titled “Tempo Rei”. This is taking him through sports palaces and stadiums in nine Brazilian cities - including the 42,000-cap Ligga Arena in Curitiba and the Farmasi Arena in Rio di Janeiro - and is scheduled to run until November 2025.

At all but one of the shows he has been playing through a Martin Audio MLA loudspeaker array, provided by partner Gabisom Audio Equipment. Responsible for the sound system design, optimisation and recording is Martin Audio devotee and eight times Latin Grammy award-winner Daniel Carvalho, who has regularly mixed through MLA.

“Farmasi Arena (aka the Jeunesse) is not an easy venue”, he says. “It has a long reverb on the low end and the shows there are known for delivering a muddy sound. But with the low leakage of MLA, side lobe reverberation is much lower in volume and the clarity of the vocal penetrates the field comfortably with the electronic processing. With normal systems, production uses a delay for upper balcony but with the long throw of the MLA system we were able to do without.”

The PA comprised 17 MLA and an MLD per side, and 17 outfills (also with a single MLD). A castellated subwoofer array of 34 MLX speakers and eight MLA Compact front fills completed the set-up. At Farmasi Arena, they were unable to fly the subwoofers due to loading restrictions, as they have been doing in other venues.

Most of the array optimisation was prefigured in Martin Audio’s Display software. “I use the Display 3 (with WPL in place of MLA) to gain some insight of the horizontal coverage and azimuth of the arrays”, explains Carvalho. “In places, it just required some minor EQ and level in the delayed arrays to align with the main PA. I could then walk around with the venue software and Smaart computer and tune it all.”

Gilberto Gil was supported by a backing band including many of the Gilberto family (sons, grandsons, daughter and extended family), with a string quartet and horn section. He also introduced some surprise guests at the Farmasi, like Caetano Veloso, Anitta, Marisa Monte and Lulu Santos. The shows here extended over four days, with 17,000 people attending each night.

(Photos: Martin Audio)

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