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www.midasconsoles.com

PA Plus Productions (Toronto) deployed a Midas XL8 digital live performance system for this year’s Canadian Songwriter’s Hall of Fame Awards, streamlining their annual audio production for this prestigious event.

Held on Saturday, March 1st at the Toronto Centre for the Arts, the 2008 show honored, among others, legendary Canadian singer/songwriter Paul Anka, with five of his songs inducted. A radio broadcast of the show aired the next day; the television broadcast went out on Monday, March 3rd.

Analog Sound and Feel Intact…

As the first big digital product from a brand famous for analogue quality, the XL8 really does live up to the Midas name, according to John Lacina of PA Plus, who mixed the music portion of the show: “It sounds, feels, and behaves like an analogue Midas, but with huge digital processing power. I noticed a marked improvement right from the start in the sound quality over other digital products I have used. The XL8 lived up to the hype, so to speak, in that it does not sound digital at all. In this sense the stellar onboard EQ and Dynamics can be used to fine tune, rather than outright fix, the sound, sometimes encountered in other ‘less musical’ digital systems.

Beyond the fact that it simply sounds good, features like the POP groups make it quick and easy to access the XL8’s serious digital power, without sifting through tons of pages. “Being an analogue guy, that’s one of the things that’s been a big negative about many digital consoles,” Lacina adds; “you can find yourself in a situation where you are unable to access what you need quickly enough. The XL8’s features, such as POP and VCA grouping, provide a simple yet complete solution to this issue. Easy access to editing and storing these groups meant that we could deal with the inevitable last minute changes to input lists very quickly and without the annoying ‘crosshair patching’ steps. The versatile automation system allows for easy manipulation for multiple scene shows. The extensive control over what parameters are-or are not-stored scene-to-scene, together with easy to use copy and paste functions, helped to efficiently manage the 15 musical performances. We rehearse this show over three or four days, so things can change as you get more comfortable and as the band settles in. Further scene functions meant that we could edit any scene/s with changes we liked, not unlike a Broadway show with an understudy, where you’d need to make a global change throughout the scenes. XL8 makes that easy.”

“The ‘traffic’ portion of the show was mixed by Ian Dunbar,” Lacina adds, “including all host and guest lav mics, the recipient podium mic, and all the VTR playback, etc. We incorporated the ‘B’ function of the XL-8 together with its separate monitoring as well as feeding the show video program feed into 1 of the screens. This gave us a comfortable dual engineer environment.”

Streamlined Splitting

Beyond the console work surface, the XL8 is very much a complete system, offering a unique degree of networking facility that can streamline the topography of the signal chain with the industry’s lowest latency and, of course, full redundancy. Lacina described how this made a difference at the awards show: “Unlike in years past, where the music portion of the show is handled by a number of splitters-a pair of 52 channel analogues, for example, and then another splitter for multiple truck feeds-we were able to use the XL8 and network its system splitters to distribute audio everywhere it was needed, and all via a single, compact control centre.”

Lacina and Systems Tech Mark Radu used three of the XL8 system’s DL451 I/O boxes (all stowed tidily backstage), and a forth at FOH. One unit was loaded with digital cards. We inserted our speaker system controllers via AES into 12 of the matrices. This meant we could leave the speaker DSP racks on stage, thereby reducing our footprint at FOH and saving us from running 300-feet copper returns to the amp racks. It was a great advantage to be able to route our speaker controller software and our measurement data to the screens on the XL8 when needed.

“Another two DL451s-one stage left, one stage right-handled the outputs of the matrices, effectively making a mirror of the whole system output on either side of the stage, for full central control of the amps and speakers. The forth DL451, located at FOH, handled local inputs and outputs. The production used around 64 channels of music inputs at the splitters, a split to the monitor console, and also a split to the broadcast truck. The patching possibilities of this system are endless; we could access any input or output at any part of the network.”

“From our perspective, we really enjoyed working with the XL8 and with the Midas team,” Lacina adds. “Steve Lotzer, Mitch Mortensen, and Jim Pfitzinger did a fantastic job helping out on our maiden voyage with XL8 for this high profile show. Manufacturer support is a very important part of taking on a big new digital system like this, and the Midas team is second to none.”

www,midasconsoles.com

Clair Brothers Showco, one of the world’s most influential PA rental companies, has purchased and taken delivery of two Midas XL8 Live Performance Systems. The Midas flagship joins Clair Brothers’ extensive XL4 and Heritage 3000 rental inventory, which continue to be used daily on major touring productions, both across America and throughout the world.

Midas has worked in partnership and consulted with Clair Brothers Showco throughout the XL8’s development, with delegations from Midas paying regular visits to Clair’s headquarters in Pennsylvania, USA since the beginning of the project in early 2004. These visits proved invaluable, helping Midas fine tune their digital concepts into the flagship product the XL8 is today.

“As a leading light of the global touring industry we have always been very proud to have Clair Brothers Showco as a long term Midas customer,” says Midas’ sales and marketing director David Cooper. “It was therefore very important to keep them up to speed at all stages during our digital development program.”

Clair Brothers Showco commented “With so many of our long term clients in love with the legendary analogue ‘Midas’ sound we were excited to be involved in the birth of their first digital console, the XL8. The large scale networked design offers the user a massive amount of accessible input/output creative flexibility together with absolute redundancy designed in as standard. It is no easy task to retain that absolute analogue ’sound’ in a digital console design, so for us the real surprise is the number of test drivers who walk away from our XL8s saying ‘it doesn’t sound digital - it sounds like a Midas’. Purchasing our first Midas XL8s is a natural step in our company’s ongoing policy of offering the latest cutting edge technology to all of our many worldwide touring clients.”

“The Clair Brothers Showco final seal of approval is extremely important to us,” continues Cooper. “This purchase sends a very clear signal that the Midas XL8 is fast establishing itself as the digital standard at the highest level of touring production.”

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www.electrovoice.com

If it ain‘t broke, don‘t fix it. Sound designer Derrick Zieba hasn‘t changed his successful formula for the BRIT Awards for the last three years, casting virtually the same crew of engineers, staying with the PA systems supplier Britannia Row Productions, and flying substantial amounts of Electro-Voice X-Line array systems for the benefit of the British music industry as it celebrates the year‘s achievements in London‘s Earls Court.

Gallery

As in 2007, the full width of the Earls Court arena was filled by a double stage, allowing producers to flip-flop between live performances on the ‘Glam‘ stage and the ‘Punk‘ stage, with the presenters Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne in the centre. According to Zieba, the show turned out to be “my best BRITs ever; we delivered an event for everyone, and still managed to develop a real stage show for each artist, from Mika, who opened the evening, to Sir Paul McCartney, who closed it.” Award winners ranged from the Foo Fighters and Kylie Minogue taking the International gongs, to the Arctic Monkeys and Take That from the UK.

Last year‘s EV X-Line PA system generated such a positive reaction that Zieba repeated the design for the 2008 show. However, one international newcomer was making its debut appearance: EV‘s NetMax N8000 digital matrix system, added into the system for extra control. “The whole system is mastered through IRIS-Net control and supervision software,” explains Zieba. “However, NetMax helped us enormously by giving us accurate and recallable control of all the smaller speakers, allowing us to insert EQ and delay, and meter the results. It gave us the same level of control over the rest of the system that IRIS-Net gave us over the main PA.”

Although there were two stages, there was just one main sound system. Left and right of the massive 70-meter stage set were hangs of Electro-Voice X-Line mid-top cabinets and subs. The stage system was completed by a center hang of 6 small cabinets squashed into a tiny space below the follow-spots. Zieba balanced levels and delay to give a stereo image in the centre of the arena. The substantial delay system operated as a duplicate of the front system. With a L/R/L arrangement on the hangs, each with 8x EV Xvls cabinets, the front-of-house engineers used the two delay hangs in front of them as their reference.

“The EV X-Line system has developed into an extraordinarily good PA for rock ‘n‘ roll,” says Zieba, although he has another more subtle motive for choosing it. “X-Line is attractive for its large form factor size. We only have an hour with each band, and I don‘t want to spend that time persuading them that the PA can deliver their performance. It‘s a psycho-acoustic thing, but one that I have to take into account - the sound system has got to look the part!”

Earls Court, the vast central London auditorium built over a swimming pool, has a reputation as a difficult acoustic environment. Zieba confirms that the EV line array is up to the challenges: “last year, people commented on how well it covered the room, and how clean it sounded. We can zone it, balance it, and deliver an extremely punchy rock ‘n‘ roll sound while staying within the guidelines of licensing.”

This year saw a pleasing collaboration between the BRIT Awards sound team and the local licensing authority: an SPL of 97dB was agreed upon, contingent upon a mandatory issue of earplugs for people in the pit area, to ensure acceptable exposure over the 2.5 hour duration of the live show.

The BRITs sound team:

Sound Designer: Derrick Zieba

FOH Engineers: Chris Morrison, Maurizio Gennari, and band engineers

FOH (presentations): Chris Coxhead

Monitor Engineers: John James, Graham Blake, John Lewis

Crew Chief: John Gibbons

System Techs: Chris Peters and Nico Royan

Stage Team: Pete McGlynn (Punk stage) Stefan Krista (Glam stage)

Radio Systems: Josh Lloyd and Barry Mac

www.shuttlesound.com

IRIS-Net

HOLLYWOOD — EASTWEST‘s Fab Four Virtual Instrument Collection was recognized by the international music trade press as it took home the MIPA (Musikmesse International Press Award) for Best Sound Library.

MIPA winners are selected each year by 100 music trade magazines from all over the world for being most innovative new products in the industry. The company‘s Fab Four Virtual Instrument stood out in its category in that the collection was meticulously recorded using the same type of instruments and recording equipment as was used by the Beatles.

“The Fab Four project was truly a labor of love for us and it‘s great to see it internationally recognized for the amount of work that went into it,” says EASTWEST Founder and Fab Four Producer Doug Rogers. “Like the Beatles popularity before it, the Fab Four Virtual Instrument has become an international success and is helping to bring the group‘s innovative sounds to the next generation of musicians.”

In addition to the extensive research spent on acquiring instruments and recording equipment, the Fab Four Virtual Instruments project also involved Engineer Ken Scott, who worked on such Beatles albums as A Hard Day‘s Night, Help, Rubber Soul, Magical Mystery Tour, and The Beatles. To further ensure authenticity, guitarist Laurence Juber and drummer Denny Seiwell, both of whom were members of Paul McCartney and Wings, played the same kind of instruments as those used by the Beatles for the collection‘s recordings.