Karaoke at The Mida Performance Store
China - The Mida Performance Store in Changsha, the capital city of China’s Hunan province, is a new concept that offers a high-spec live performance venue, bar and social media experience for music lovers. It provides an open stage for anyone wanting to give free rein to their singing talents in front of an appreciative audience of their peers, and the entire performance space is equipped with Genelec 1032C and 4030C loudspeakers for a high quality audio experience for both performers and audience members alike.
The concept has proved hugely popular with customer flow reaching 120,000 in the first month of opening followed by 200,000 in the second month. On the Store Member’s Day, performance waiting time exceeded three hours. Much of the popularity is attributed to the superlative quality of the Genelec audio experience that forms an integral part of the concept. From the outset the brief was to deliver the best possible sound, both for the audience and the performers, for which a Genelec solution was chosen throughout.
"Genelec is widely known throughout the professional audio industry,” remarked Mr Zhang Hongxu, head of market operations at Mida Performance Store. “A great many albums are recorded and mixed using Genelec. There are vast numbers of people that secretly harbour the soul of a singer but it’s difficult for ordinary consumers to experience a professional environment and facilities. Our aim is to bring a truly professional experience to ordinary people, to allow all music lovers to enjoy a high-end performance.”
The store covers an area of about 50sq.m including the stage, audience area and the bar. After careful consideration of the layout, traffic flow, and the crosstalk from other areas in the store, the engineers from Mida and Genelec China selected a pair of Genelec 1032Cs as the main loudspeakers flown either side of the stage, supplemented by five 4030Cs to provide extended coverage across the rest of the audience and bar area, plus a further four 4030Cs for stage foldback.
The goal was to achieve smooth, even coverage across the designated audience area, with clear, detailed audio at optimum SPLs, thus avoiding the typical reaction to low quality audio with poor intelligibility - which is simply to turn up the volume. “Almost everyone has experienced karaoke with poor sound quality,” says Mr Zhang Hongxu. “Here, it’s a completely different experience.”
(Jim Evans)

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