Harman Buyout Dead - FOH Online

Maroon Five Not Blue About Console
DALY CITY, CA — Maroon 5 engineer Ryan
Cecil is using a Digidesign VENUE system
for monitors on the band’s current tour in
support of their sophomore studio outing,
It Won’t Be Soon Before Long, released this
spring.
Cecil runs 48 inputs from the stage to
the FOH Rack, which houses the full five-DSP
card complement. He also makes extensive
use of the Venue system’s PQ matrixes to
provide an added level of flexibility (compared
to traditional auxiliary busses), employing
six PQ matrix outputs along with 24
auxiliary busses to drive effects and other
miscellaneous items.
“Having user-defined inputs on the matrix
mixers is amazing when you need to send
a number of sources to an effects plug-in, but
don’t want to dedicate an aux or sub-group,”
he says. “This has made it able to do what I
would generally need a 40-bus console to
do — that and the ability to drive any effects
plug-in from a channel strip direct output.”
Cecil credits word of mouth for his
choice.
“I decided to trust what my fellow engineers
were saying and took VENUE along for
the ride,” he says. “I had only seen it on a few
gigs, but never got a chance to mix on it. I
was given a chance by the folks at Scorpio
Plymouth Jazz Festival Puts
Audio on Island Breeze
TOBAGO — Soundco Rent-A-Amp recently
provided the live audio system for the
Plymouth Jazz Festival, held on the Caribbean
island of Tobago, supported by JBL Professional
VerTec line arrays.
With a 5,000-person audience extending to
300 feet from the stage, providing even coverage
with high fidelity throughout the seating
area was a significant challenge. To overcome
these obstacles, Rent-A-Amp deployed a JBL
VerTec system with 16 VT4889 large-format line
array elements and 16 VT4880 arrayable subwoofers
arranged on each side of the stage, for
64 VerTec loudspeakers in total. Crown Macro-
Tech MA5002VZ and XTi amplifiers were used,
as well as the Soundcraft Vi6 mixing console.
The three-day festival featured numerous
world-class acts, including Elton John, Al Green,
Earth Wind & Fire and Diana Ross. Now in its
third year, the Plymouth Jazz Festival brings together
legendary performers from around the
globe for a unique concert setting.
Sound in Boston to come down and pre-program
what I could on it. A week later, and
with only about an hour of set-up, I had the
band playing in rehearsals on it fully satisfied,”
he continues. Its ease of use was particularly
important to him.
“On this tour I am filling in as production
manager, and that wouldn’t have been possible
with an analog desk,” he says.
With the help of Digidesign, Cecil also
created a talkback system for the band. “The
guys all have switch mics that come into the
console,” he says. “I have that set up with a
ducker plug-in on the cue bus. When the
guys ask for something, it keys the ducker to
News
lower the overall volume of the cue mix and
keep their talkback on top. It keeps it from
getting way too loud in my ears.”
Rane Granted Patent on Perfect-Q Technology
MUKILTEO, WA — The U.S. Patent &
Trademark Office has granted U.S. Patent
7,266,205, “Linearized Filter Band Equipment
and Processes,” to inventor Ray Miller
The stage for the Plymouth Jazz Festival
International News
and assignee Rane Corporation.
The technologies patented are used
in Rane’s live sound graphic EQs, the DEQ
60 and DEQ 60L, in the Drag Net software-
Arrays Power Trinidad Megachurch
TRINIDAD — The 3,000-seat Trinidad
Christian Center in Petit Valley, Trinidad,
has installed a Renkus-Heinz self-powered
loudspeaker system for its productionbased
worship services as part of an ongoing
program of investment in its facilities.
The church — one of the sun-kissed
Caribbean island’s largest houses of worship
— hosts eight to ten services a week in its main
hall, where the new system has been installed,
while a second smaller hall caters for 1,200
people; further breakout halls serve community
events, children’s groups and special events.
A high, curved ceiling characterizes the
wide, 180-degree fan-shaped main hall, where
system integrator AMR, based in Barataria, Trinidad,
began a series of upgrades of the room’s
house system in 2005. Systems Engineer Clifford
Beckles comments: “There needed to be
a sense of where the voice is coming from, a
sense of localization; it was about directivity.”
Worship services, which are entirely volunteer-led,
generally involve loud music ministry.
Almost every member of the choir has their
own solo microphone: “It seems to be a Trinidadian
thing, and it makes the engineer sweat!”
Trinidad Christian Center in Trinidad
comments Beckles. The system comprises four
self-powered PN102/LA cabinets a side. These
cover the entire main body of the seating.
They used a Renkus-Heinz PN82/12 and
two compact PN82/9 self-powered cabinets
in the near fill area, four more of which were
deployed in two delay zones at the room’s extremities.
Beckles says, “To EQ the room, we
used a 1/3 octave EQ at locations around the
room, looked at it with SMAART in a few different
areas and dialed it back in by hand.”
Clifford Beckles concludes: “The Senior
Reverend downloaded an intelligibility software
package to check out the results for
himself and found the system was perfect,
with almost totally flat EQ apart from a few
deliberate dips to suit the required sound for
the worship space.”
controlled RPM series Programmable Multiprocessor
DSP units, and in the Serato Rane
Series Graphic Equalizer Pro Tools plug-in for
the Digidesign ICON and VENUE consoles.
Maroon 5 engineer Ryan Cecil
According to the company, this new
technology allows creation of a true “graphic”
equalizer, one whose output response is
designed to match its slider settings.
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