6 News 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 <strong>Online</strong> 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 <strong>FOH</strong> 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 <strong>FOH</strong> 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.”
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