The five visually-stunning perspex floor monitors, doubling as a prism on the glass-floored LED stage at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Riga, were a clever adaptation of Martin Audio’s classic LE12JB floor monitor.

When DM Audio’s Lars Wern — who also acted as audio consultant on the recent Eurovision events in Stockholm and Tallinn — realised that the lack of underfloor space in Riga’s Skonto Hall would make it impossible to recess all the wedges under stage (as they had in Sweden and Estonia) he debated whether it would be possible to have the floor monitors constructed in perspex. He thus approached Martin Audio at this year’s Pro Light + Sound exhibition in Frankfurt — and the UK manufacturers were equal to the task.

This year DM Audio cooperated with local company Universal Baltic Sound (UBS) under Edmunds Verners. While UBS supplied the FOH speaker system (and necessary amplifier power), processors and cabling, DM Audio provided the Martin Audio monitor speakers, effects, mixers, matrix distribution — and the five-strong engineering team.

While DM Audio could conceal a mixture of 11 conventional Martin Audio LE700 and LE12JB wedges in a pit at front of stage (beefed up with some WSX subs), the perspex five-monitor vocal system on stage was an essential addition. This was to assist the artistes not using IEM, but who were still positioned too far away back from the front row LE700’s.
Aesthetics clearly became a priority. “The LED screen shining through the perspex made the wedges look fantastic,” said Lars. “And the sound differential with the perspex cabinet was easily compensated for by applying additional EQ.”

Since the internal chassis would also be easily visible through the transparent perspex, it was decided to further improve the aesthetics of the LE12JB by removing the crossover network, placing it in a remote box to leave only the silver-painted drivers and horns visible to the television audience.

Aside from the chassis construction and adjustment of the input connector/filter network, Martin Audio say that extreme care was needed on final build, since in addition to the silver-painted driver rears, all internal cables had to be meticulously ‘dressed’ for neatness — even the speaker cables were specially fabricated in silver!

A dedicated crew of five were able to place the wedges in the exact position for each entry, since the precise location of microphones, monitors, grand piano and drums were able to be marked out on the LED floor.

DM Audio’s ‘Mr Barney’ liaised directly with each artist before and after every rehearsal to ascertain the re-quired monitor mix, and communicated this information back to the foldback engineers, Mats Wennerholm and Philip Jansson. From Mr. Barney, DM sensed how popular these wedges were proving to be as the week-long rehearsals wore on.

“Everybody loved the monitor system — in fact we did not receive a single negative comment from any of the artistes when the show was over,” confirmed Lars.

Lars Wern believes that the construction of the Martin Audio wedges, with their asymmetrical horn design, make them highly suitable for this type of show. And now that DM Audio have added the customised speakers to their own rental fleet, he envisages that there will be plenty of further opportunities to use them for televised shows (in any case, DM can easily resite all components into standard wooden cabs when needed).

And Martin Audio have vowed that if Eurovision proves a need for this type of stage monitor they will make them into a production item.

Pic: Maltese contestant, Lynn Chircop, performs through the new Martin Audio perspex wedges