AudioMedia - November 2008 - (Page 66)

www.audiomedia.com Mendip District Council has delivered its verdict on this year’s Glastonbury festival. The festival received 32 noise complaints from 21 residents this year, a number which the council attributes to Shangri La and Trash City; two new areas of the festival. However, Environmental Health Officer, Keith Horton, commented that “weather conditions can significantly influence the off-site effects and there was evidence of this again this year.” Glastonbury organisers will be under pressure to rethink their noise management strategy; a process that will require some creativity if they hope to keep both festival-goers and locals happy. w www.mendip.gov.uk Berlin Grapples With Gruppen An inside look at a challenging production from the Berliner Festival. A production of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Gruppen, a piece wr itten for three orchestral units deployed in a horseshoe encompassing the left, front, and right of an audience, was performed by the Berliner Philharmonika during this year’s Berliner Festival. The production presented a series of challenges for Sound Engineer Paul Jeukendrup and Sound System Designer Paul van Baasbank. The division of the orchestra into three units required reinforcement from three discrete speaker systems at front of house. Van Baasbank began his design with L-Acoustics’ SoundVision D software, to realise a loudspeaker system that could provide optimum localisation for the three orchestras, whilst keeping sufficient coverage and a controllable sound pressure level throughout the hangar. “The big challenge was that there needed to be a mix of the amplified sound with the acoustic sound to get more sense of directness,” commented Van Baasbank. “The acoustic panelling and natural energy of the orchestra created a lot of first reflections, but the amplified sound of the KIVAs blended perfectly to produce this effect without the audience realising the concert was amplified.” Sound Engineer Paul Jeukendrup contributed to the solution surrounding the spatial separation of the orchestral units by close miking the instruments. “I chose to close mic the instruments because I wanted to avoid comb filtering and crosstalk, which both happen when using many The Army Air Corps recently held Music in the Air, an annual concert and flying display, with sound reinforcement provided by two Allen and Heath iLive digital systems. The iLive 80 console system managed the audio zone distribution, whilst the larger iLive 112 system mixed the stage performances. “We needed to cover the 600m wide and 500m deep runway area with both the music of the Army Air Corps Band and guests, as well as the air display commentators,” explained Stuart Roberts, the MD of Kent-based PA firm SRD. SRD used four 10m Piram towers to fly a GAE Director Waveline line array, as well as a horn system to reach the peripheral areas. w www.allen-heath.co.uk overhead mics,” he explained. “The music is very detailed and I wanted to bring out this in the auditorium… I had to consider each musician as a potential soloist, and thus be able to control the level of each individual instrument.” Jeukendrup used DPA instruments involved. The production was performed in a ’s aircraft hangar, presenting further concerns for the sound team. Van Baasbank noted that, when empty, the aircraft hanger “had a reverberation time of more than eight seconds.” However, with the help of acoustic panelling and baffles, this was reduced to three seconds. Jeukendrup concluded, “I was extremely pleased with the results… we were able to bring out the details of the music in the hangar in such a natural way that many people did not realise the concerts were amplified, which was exactly our goal.” DPA Microphones + www.dpamicrophones.com L-Acoustics + () www.l-acoustics.com s and s for all of the string Little Labs has announced the Redcloud 8810U8ERS, a compact eight-channel balanced attenuator pack capable of stereo or mono attenuation in groups of two. The attenuators used are of 5k What The Dickens impedance, allowing devices to easily drive the attenuator without high frequency loss over longer cables. The new Redcloud can also be rack mounted, making it possible to have up to 32 channels of attenuation in a 1U rack space. Uses include: simple analogue faders pre or post Pro Tools, and volume controls for multiple speaker systems. w www.littlelabs.com The Midas XL has begun its Broadway debut run, mixing sound for a musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. Ty Lackey is mixing the production, with sound design from Sound Associates’ Carl Casella, Dominic Sack, and Wallace Flores. “This show has a -piece orchestra and wireless mics, and, starting with the compression on the input channels, we have four different algorithms that we can fly through and audition for particular voices or instruments in any given on-stage situation,” explained Flores. There are around scenes set for the entire show – the reduction in scenes is another advantage due to the POP and VCA groups, which in this application allows the operator to create a scene within a scene. “ We have the show programmed song by song, often with multiple cues per scene, be it for a wireless mics, band change, or a sound effect,” concludes Flores. “Everything is gain adjusted, assigned, and VCA’d – a single operator can easily handle all our inputs and returns… Most importantly the audience loves how the show sounds ” 66 AUDIO MEDIA NOVEMBER 2008 http://www.audiomedia.com http://www.mendip.gov.uk http://www.dpamicrophones.com http://www.allen-heath.co.uk http://www.l-acoustics.com http://www.littlelabs.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of AudioMedia - November 2008

AudioMedia - November 2008 Contents Recording News Post News Broadcast News Geofocus: Italy What's Up UK AES Review For the Record Studio Snapshot: Aquarium Abbey Road Plug-ins Brilliance Pack Neumann TLM67 Mercenary Audio KM-69 IZ Technology ADA Final Cut Special: Bond TC Powercore 6000 EP Productions Nagra VI Product Sampler: Location Tools Video Guide AMSR News Shure KSM9 Big Beach Boutique 4

AudioMedia - November 2008

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