Martin Audio MLA, User Manual

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MLA System
USER GUIDE
MLA System
User Guide V2.1
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Coverage Tab
The next step is to precisely define the coverage but as with any application it is very good practice to save your project as you
go along. Click on File on the Dashboard if it is not visible and click on the Save icon. Choose a suitable file location, you might
with to create a dedicated folder for a given show to hold all files in one place, then name the file and click save.
Having completed the venue slice, the Coverage (“Cover”) tab will now be active. A single mouse click will open the Coverage
Editor window.
Defining venue planes
As with the Slice Editor, the Coverage Editor will open as a floating window, this is definitely worth maximising as you may need
to work on quite small sections and there is no zoom function in the current version (it is on the wish list for a future version)
You will see the venue that you have previously drawn looking as shown;-
Each node entered in your Venue slice is shown as a white circle with each plane now allocated a colour between the nodes.
There are three types of plane, Audience which is shown green, non audience which is red and hard avoid which is blue. The
system by default makes the stage hard avoid, the coverage planes from where specified in the venue slice start to finish will be
audience and all other planes non-audience. The first step is to edit these to reflect exactly how you need the system to react to
the venue.
In the example above, the audience area includes the stalls, the wall at the back of the stalls, under the balcony, the front of the
balcony and the balcony itself. Clearly this is not correct and we need to change some of these planes.
At this stage we have to make a decision on where our priorities lie. There is a temptation to make all areas other than the
genuine audience planes hard avoid to try and make the system reduce spill onto anywhere other than the audience, however
we have to be realistic about what can be achieved. Whilst we have a tremendous amount of processing power available, we
cannot change the laws of physics so there is a limit to just how much we can get the system to do. We are more likely to get
good results if we are sensible with how much demand we put on the DSP. In the example we have shown, we are obviously not
going to get any direct sound arriving under the balcony, it is essentially in “shadow” so there is little point in making this area
hard avoid, likewise it clearly shouldn’t be defined as audience or the system will waste DSP attempting coverage over an area it
cannot reach so it should definitely be non audience. With a little experience you will learn what works well and what not to
attempt. In our example I would keep the stage as hard avoid, perhaps also have a hard avoid on the balcony front which could
give problems with a slap-back echo on stage and make all other areas non audience. The default setting usually has the stage
hard avoid also including the stage front and the “pit” between the stage and audience start as hard avoid. This is not only