Chairs were set out on the steps of the Opera House forecourt for the evening concert

The crowd arrived early for the Buena Vista Social Club outdoor concert as the sun set over Sydney Harbour. A giant cumulus cloud, framed by the sails of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge, glowed tangerine and pink. Tonight, the Cuban band would play its final, sold out concert on the forecourt of the Opera House, surely one of the most splendid sites on earth.
The Opera House, surrounded by water on three sides, is set on a peninsula that juts out into the harbour. The fourth side is a towering wall of natural sandstone topped with palm trees and giant fig trees of the Botanic Gardens. What a spot. What a night. The stars were beginning to come out as the Buena Vista Social Club took the stage. Later a half moon lit up the ferries as they glided through the water beyond the audience.
The Buena Vista Social Club is a modern fairy tale. A group of brilliant musicians play for decades in a Havana club, and then disappear into obscurity. The 79-year-old piano player Rubén González doesn't own a piano anymore. Vocalist Ibrahim Ferrer is shining shoes for a living when Ry Cooder and producer Nick Gold arrive in Cuba in '96, track down the musicians, and bring them into a local studio. The rest is history; the band re-forms, wins a Grammy, and tour happily ever after around Europe, South America and the United States.

Coda Audio's sound designer Michael Wilkie

This was their first time in Australia, and the Buena Vista Social Club played three shows inside the Concert Hall, powered by Meyer speakers. Their final show was outside on the balmy evening of 2 March. An audience of 6000 sat on chairs placed on the forecourt and the steps leading up to the Opera House. The stage was set up between the harbour and the massive sandstone wall of the Botanical Gardens.
From the minute the band began with a sassy brass number, the crowd was in raptures. The sound was exquisite, capturing the mellow smoky tone of the trombone solos, the smooth vocal subtlety of Ibrahim Ferrer, and the surging Piaf power of Omara Portuondo.

From the top down, 2 x MSL-6, 4 x DS-4P, 4 x MSL-4, 2 x CQ-1, 2 x UPA-1P and 4 x PSW-6

Extraordinary Venue, Unique Problems

Opera House Sound and AV Coordinator David Claringbold drew up a preliminary design and coordinated the audio setup for the show. He commissioned Coda Audio to supply the Meyer speakers and he then fine tuned the design with Coda director Michael Wilkie. The extraordinary venue posed unique problems. Absorbent areas of water and sky were juxtaposed with the hard surfaces of sandstone wall and granite forecourt, as well as the glass walls and tile sails of the Opera House. This was the first time the Opera House had a seated, ticketed, paying audience out on the forecourt, so the stakes were high. The show had to be perfect
Coda's affable, articulate Brad Law, 26, was the systems engineer for the show. "It's a difficult venue, with all the reflections off the sails," he said. "All the arrays are pointed slightly down, so they hit the audience only. They're all tight Q boxes with pretty precise coverage, so they don't spray energy off to the side. We needed to keep the sound away from the side sandstone wall." Coda solved this problem by putting in a delay tower near the massive wall, which also delivered even sound to the rear without blasting the front. Two horizontal rows of four MSL-4s were arrayed on the tower, one row for the raised seating and one for the ground level seats.
The stereo system for the stage was rigged onto scaffold towers. On each side, there were two MSL-6 self-powered loudspeakers for the raised seating section. The next row was four DS-4P mid bass, then four MSL-4 self-powered loudspeakers for front fill and ground level, and finally two CQ-1 and two UPA-1P for front fill. Four PSW-6 self-powered cardioid subs formed the ground level. On stage, 12 USM-1 bi-amped wedges (15" + horn) were downstage, and for the upstage brass, the band insisted on using six UM-1P floor monitors, with a 12" low frequency driver, and a 2" horn.
The Buena Vista Social Club is light on bottom end, but several trombones, trumpets, saxophones, flutes, congas, maracas and vocals make for some powerful top end. Law said, "We were concerned about it bouncing around, but we had no tonal problems. We spent a fair bit of time configuring, tuning and aligning the PA."

Every Note of a Double Bass

Brad Law, FOH system engineer for Coda Audio

Coda Audio has been working on many World Music concerts recently, and Law has noticed that engineers are specifying Meyer. "We are seeing Meyer sound riders. The Buena Vista Social Club asked for Meyer, and the Opera House has Meyer indoors so it was all compatible. Meyer gives real in-your-face sound. You don't have this distance between performer and audience. David Claringbold commented that he rarely gets to hear the voicing of every single note of the double bass, but he heard it here."
Six months ago, Coda started using the Meyer RMS™, and Law loves it. "We have 44 speakers in this rig tonight, and RMS™ lets us accurately monitor the actual condition of the loudspeakers. The RMS™ gives us constant feedback on how the individual components are performing. We no longer have to rely on reading non-proprietary devices, which aren't tremendously accurate. Now we know exactly when we've hit limit on any of our components, and we can take evasive action. On the maintenance front, we don't have to box check every single cabinet. The RMS™ will tell us if something's gone wrong."
That night was a little taste of paradise. The seagulls soared miles overhead through the clouds, as the crowd went crazy for an encore. Forty-five minutes after the show ended, the sky turned a threatening shade of deep purple, and torrents of lashing rain poured down onto the forecourt. Luckily, the Meyer speakers were weatherproof, unlike the crew.

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