Versatile sound in the creative centre – LD Systems MAILA sets the stage at V4M

The abbreviated name says it all: V4M = Vida (Life) for Musicians. The cultural and digital broadcasting centre in Vilanova I la Geltru near Barcelona, Spain, which has opened its doors in March 2023, is aimed at musicians, artists and content producers and will offer production and digital distribution facilities. The operator, VIDA Festival, was looking for a compact and active sound system with line array characteristics that could be flexibly adapted to the location – so naturally, they ended up with MAILA…

Vida Festival is a summer music festival organised in Vilanova y la Geltrú, a village by the sea close to Barcelona. This local Festival was born in 2014 and has been growing through the years but they maintain the same philosophy of nature, respect, culture and music. The line-up includes a lot of local musicians, but also international music stars. VIDA Festival is also helping these local music bands to push their careers, as they are also their promoters. The festival had already the V4M recording studio but wanted to create a venue, where these music bands can, apart from recording their music, prepare some presentation videos and do rehearsals. V4M has built a new room with a stage and bar to make this objective become a reality. The new V4M venue started its activity in March 2023.

Pere Serrano, VIDA’s sound engineer, had looked at many different systems that were either too big, too inflexible, or too underpowered for use in the V4M. “We needed a flown, slim line array system with excellent sound that could be adapted as flexibly as possible, even when it was already installed.”

All Easy

Serrano first came into contact with LD Systems’ MAILA Modular All-Round Intelligent Line Array through Adam Hall Group Sales Manager Guillermo Hidalgo. “Guillermo told me about MAILA and invited me to listen and try it out.” Serrano was particularly impressed with MAILA’s sound quality in the whole range of frequencies. Serrano also pointed how easy is to set it up. The EasyMount+ truss mount can be fitted with a maximum of eight SAT satellite modules and one COL column module, allowing convenient 360° alignment of flown MAILA configurations – even under load.

Flexible angles

The MAILA setup in the V4M consists of a flown stereo array with three MAILA SAT satellites and one MAILA SPA amplifier module each. On the floor, in front of the stage, there are two MAILA SUB 2×15” high performance subwoofers. With this small setup, Serrano’s team can cover a wide range of events and concerts in the V4M. According to Serrano, the combination of the EasySplay mechanism and the MAILA App is particularly helpful: “We adjust the angles of the satellites according to requirements; currently we have set an angle of 8°-0°-0° for the three satellites, starting from the top SAT”. The patented EasySplay mechanism allows users to adjust the tilt of each satellite almost continuously from 0° to 8°, even under load, using a rotary knob on the back of the housing.

“The MAILA is exceptionally quick and easy to configure. There are no cables between the modules and the App helps us to adjust the angles to the room and the size used.”
Pere Serrano, Sound engineer, VIDA

MAILA App

Each MAILA system can be set up in detail using the free MAILA App (iOS). Once connected, the App automatically detects the existing MAILA components and enables precise adjustment to the room. To do this, the MAILA App mirrors all the functions of the loudspeaker DSPs in real time, including EQ, delay, and more. “We have already created a small library of presets for the types of events we do, which we can access from the iPad before we go to the console and mix the show,” says Serrano. “We are happy with MAILA result as it fulfils all our needs”