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Metalheads Everywhere Unite for
Heaven and Hell, Judas Priest Tour
Lorenzo Banda and Doug Short at a Yamaha PM5D
BUENA PARK, Calif. — Headliner Judas
Priest and Heaven and Hell embarked on
tour together as part of the Metal Masters
Tour, which also included performances by
Motorhead and Testament to delight of metalheads
everywhere. Both the monitor engineer
for Heaven and Hell and Judas Priest use
Yamaha PM5D digital audio consoles.
“I have found the desk to be very friendly
to analog leviathans such as myself,”
states Doug Short, monitor engineer for Judas
Priest at the tour’s stop at Mohegan Sun
Resort & Casino in Connecticut. “The small
footprint is handy as well.”
U.S. Open of Surfing
Catches Waves
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. — Comprised
of professional surfing, BMX, skateboarding,
freestyle motocross demos, live music and a
fashion show, Go211 Live’s recently completed
U.S. Open of Surfing offered something for everyone.
The event included a fashion show and
three days of music that included performances
by a wide range of artists — including teen
heartthrob Jesse McCartney. Held on the beach,
sound reinforcement was a massive undertaking
that was handled by Torrance, Calif.-based
Broadcast Support and a sizeable collection of
loudspeakers from DAS Audio.
Being the provider of all foreground and
background sound reinforcement for the U.S.
Open of Surfing, Broadcast Support was tasked
with supplying a sound system that could deliver
clear sound under some very difficult conditions,
as company founder and co-owner Scott Ramsay
explained. “In addition to the usual issues of providing
sound for an outdoor event,” said Ramsay,
“this project was all the more challenging as we
had to provide broad coverage that extended
from the boardwalk — where the stage was located
— all the way to the water’s edge and deal
with sand and wind in the process.
“In addition to the crowds on the beach, we
also needed to deliver coverage for the people
who elected to watch from the Huntington
Beach Pier. To meet these requirements, we
needed a system with long throw and broad
horizontal dispersion characteristics that was
equally capable of delivering clear speech intel-
Jesse McCartney in concert at the U.S. Open of Surfing
ligibility and music reproduction.”
The system that Broadcast Support deployed
for the event consisted of a sizeable
number of loudspeaker enclosures from DAS
Audio’s Aero product line, including 12 Aero
38A self-powered, medium-format line array elements
— with six elements ground stacked on
the left and right sides of the stage. These were
augmented by six Aero 218A self-powered subwoofers
— three per side adjacent to the line array
modules. For front fill, three of DAS Audio’s
Variant 25A self-powered, ultra-compact line
array modules were utilized as front fills along
the lip of the stage.
Onstage monitoring was also handled by
DAS Audio loudspeakers. DAS SML-12A selfpowered,
low profile stage monitors were present,
as were DAS Audio’s Compact 218 Subs,
which were used as sidefills.
Metallica Kicks Off In-the-Round Arena Tour
continued from cover
The tour began Oct. 21 with a grand
kickoff performance at Jobing.com Arena
in Glendale, Ariz. “This is quite an innovative
system,” notes Thunder Audio VP Paul
Owen. “The entire design of the system is
in-the-round, and we’re using fiber optics all
around and no analog equipment anywhere
to minimize cable management. We are very
excited about the dramatic results the configuration
provides.”
The system design features eight equally
spaced arrays, each consisting of 12 MILO line
array loudspeakers and four MICA line array
loudspeakers. Bass power is delivered by an
innovative configuration of 40 self-powered
700-HP subwoofers, which effectively provide
uniform low-end coverage in the arena.
This subwoofer configuration was designed
by Thomas Mundorf of Meyer Sound using
MAPP Online Pro acoustical prediction pro-
gram, and was deployed at Metallica’s Berlin
and London record release events.
“We’re pretty excited to get this whole
system to work,” concludes Owen. “We tried
this new subwoofer configuration on a couple
of European promotional shows with
unbelievable results. We’ve never been able
to generate as much low frequency at a high
SPL level equally placed throughout the
whole arena with any other system we’ve
used.”
Twenty-four MJF-212A stage monitors
provide monitoring. Processing is controlled
by a Galileo loudspeaker management system
with five processors networked in concert
with the RMS remote monitoring system.
Tuning of the system is handled using
a SIM 3 audio analyzer.
NOVEMBER 2008 www.fohonline.com
“I love the PM5D console immensely,”
notes Heaven and Hell monitor engineer,
Lorenzo Banda. Kevin “Tater” McCarthy,
this year’s Parnelli Award winner for
Monitor Engineer of the Year, is currently
monitor engineer for Judas Priest.
The tour, produced by Live Nation,
was Priest’s first set of U.S. dates in
nearly three years and kicked off the
release of the band’s new CD, Nostradamus.
The 15 special engagements
began in Camden, N.J. and ended in
Las Vegas with a tour stop that also
included Toronto, Ontario.
Blues Artists Perform
at Opening of B.B. King
Museum
INDIANOLA, Miss. — The B.B. King
Museum and Delta Interpretive Center
opened Sept. 13 with a three-day celebration
and a historic, Peavey-powered concert
that paired the blues legend with several
of the marquee artists he has inspired.
Tracing King’s journey from the fields
of the Mississippi Delta to Beale Street and
beyond, the museum displays a trove of
memorabilia to illustrate the artist’s life
and inspiration. Among the guitars and
artifacts are 1950s-era 78-rpm recordings
from the personal collection of Peavey
Electronics Founder and CEO Hartley
Peavey, a lifelong blues aficionado. Even
the $15-million facility itself is part of the
collection, built onto the cotton gin where
King worked as a young man.
The 83-year-old King, who still performs
more than 100 shows a year, headlined
the celebration with a defining set of
hits and standards featuring guest guitarists
Robert Cray, Kenny Wayne Shepherd
and Keb’ ‘Mo. The main stage, provided by
Nashville-based TMG Production Services,
featured twin ground-stacked Peavey Versarray
212 line-array arrangements configured
with four Versarray 212 line arrays
and two Versarray 218 subwoofers per side
and powered by 16 Crest Audio Pro 9200
amplifiers.
“The Peavey Versarray 212 performs
exceptionally well,” said Jim Wakefield, Audio
Department manager at TMG Productions.
“I found that the 2 x 12 box focuses
and couples really well. It has an extremely
pleasant high end with very smoothsounding
ribbon drivers that have no overriding
side tones. They definitely keep up
with the 12” woofers without a problem.”
For the ribbon-cutting celebration, the
system featured a Peavey Versarray 112
line array, four per side flown on Vermette
lifts and powered by six Crest Audio Pro
8200 amplifiers.
B.B. King performing for the opening of a museum in
his honor.
Pyramid
Audio Mixes
Analog and
Digital at
JazzFest
NEW ORLEANS — The Fais Do Do
stage at New Orleans’ legendary JazzFest
represents the best of local music from
Zydeco and Cajun-influenced styles to
all the different blues and R&B forms that
make up the city’s music scene. Pyramid
Audio of Jefferson, La., has been doing
production for Fais Do Do and other
stages at JazzFest over the years. Eddie
Pearce, chief audio and FOH mixing engineer
was looking for equipment that
could enhance the audio quality yet operate
as efficiently as possible.
“We chose the APB Spectra 48 console
because one of the local bands I work had
used the smaller ProRack Monitor mixer
and it had very unique features and the
sound of a very expensive large format
console without the high price,” he says.
“I was also impressed by the sonic nature
of that console.
The Fais Do Do Stage at Jazzfest
”When it came time to do JazzFest, I
worked out a situation where we could try
out the larger format Spectra 48 console
and we took it on sight unseen because
of the quality of the ProRack. It worked
incredibly well and made mixing in that
environment fun because I got to mix music,
I wasn’t mixing the board. Plus, I loved
the sonic quality of the console. It was extremely
easy to work with, very intuitive
,with some interesting features in terms of
how they group left-right mono outputs.
”As far as the shows were concerned,
everything worked perfectly in the
sense that I’m normally used to tweaking
out the main PA system to make up
for inconsistencies in a console and I was
able to re-tweak the FOH system a bit
more flat without having to make up for
harshness or inconsistency in the sonic
output.”
Given his use of an analog console,
Pearce’s choice of Powersoft’s digital
amplification system for the subwoofers
was an interesting departure. Pearce explains,
“We had a relationship with Tom
Bensen for years in terms of other companies
and everyone at Pyramid respects
his opinion and knowledge. I started out
with two amplifiers on each side just to
power the subs. Then he convinced me
to use the Powersoft K20 and that one
amplifier replaced four 5,000-watt amplifiers.”