ProAudio Review - August 2008 - (Page 38)

LIVE | Tour Profile: By Mel Lambert Avril Lavigne’s The Best Damn Thing World Tour eportedly, when Avril Lavigne was writing the songs for her latest CD offering, The Best Damn Thing, she had one very clear goal in mind: to make it fun. And now while touring in North America, Europe and the Far East in support of that project, the Canadian-born punk/pop dynamo is using her favorite sound company to make sure that the singer's brand of infectious fun reaches her loyal audiences. Founded in 1984, Orlando-based LMG Inc. is a national provider of video, audio and lighting support with offices in Las Vegas and Phoenix. And although Lavigne has morphed during her career from a self-professed skater punk to a newly married pop princess, one thing remains constant: Jim Yakabuski, who has been running sound since midway through her first tour in 2002, serves as FOH Engineer, working with monitor engineer Matthew Peskie. System engineer is Evan Hall, an audio technician with LMG, while Shaun Shuell serves as monitor assistant/stage-patch technician and Marco Giappesi as V-DOSC CVE and PA technician. James “Marcel” Marcelek and Kevin Simmerman served as technicians on the Canadian/US tours. For Lavigne’s The Best Damn Thing Tour, LMG supplied an extensive L-Acoustics line-array system with a customdesigned touring package that included two Digidesign VENUE D-Show Profile consoles. Yakabuski has been mixing headline acts as FOH engineer since 1992. “I started out mixing monitors for Aerosmith, Poison, Van Halen and, before that, a bunch of opening acts. I then took over FOH duties on Van Halen between 1993 and 1998. I’ve also mixed Matchbox Twenty, Luis Miguel, Mr. Nugent, Julio Iglesias and Englebert Humperdinck.” He has also been handling corporate audio for more than a decade and, in 2005, joined LMG as a show and tour technician. In 2007, Yakabuski and LMG built a concert touring division and prepared to put the Avril Lavigne tour on the road. For The Best Damn Thing tour, Avril Lavigne opted for a rhinestone-encrusted Sennheiser SKM 935 G2 with an EM 550 G2 receiver. V-DOSC LINE ARRAYS WITH DV-DOSC AND KUDO CABINETS “We discussed loudspeaker choices early on with Avril’s management,” the FOH engineer explains, “and how that would affect quality and coverage. We needed to ensure a greatsounding seat anywhere in the house.” For the Spring Leg of the US tour, “we had 15 V-DOSC with three dV-DOSC speakers per side as mains for the larger venues, and then 10 KUDO cabinets per side as side arrays. We also went back to using a center sub-cluster, which in my past experience has proved very successful. There were 12 Meyer Sound 700-HP Ultra High-Power Subwoofers in a single long array in the center - with nothing at all left and right - and only one 700-HP sub per side about 16 feet off-center to hold up two dV-DOSCs that take care of front-fill requirements. Matt Peskie and I also drive the whole system with LAcoustics’ new LA8 amps, which are controlled by LA Network Manager.” Equipment choice was based on both coverage and overall sound quality. “The shape of concert audiences is changing from 10 or 15 years ago,” Yakabuski considers. “Even though there is a huge video wall behind the stage that has some fantastic content on it - and a pair of side screens that [feature] the artist’s face all night long - concertgoers will still buy a ticket for the side of the stage where they have no view of these screen elements, long before they’ll buy a ticket further back in the venue. Which means that although the flown V-DOSC arrays cover most of the venues, KUDO arrays are required to handle the required additional side coverage.” “You have to cover a very wide amount of seats along the side,” Yakabuski continues, “but also a very tall swath. The bottom seats near the stage can sometimes be only 15 or 20 feet from the downstage edge, while the top bowl of an arena may be 150 feet away. Having the flexibility to put a huge J-curve in the array, and then adjust the horizontal coverage from 55 to 80 to 110 degrees, was a big deciding factor in going with the KUDO boxes.” As well as serving as side fills, LMG used the supplied L-Acoustics KBUMP rigging bar to turn three or four KUDO cabinets on their sides for outdoor amphitheatre situations to achieve just 30 or 40 degrees of horizontal coverage; K-Louvers were used to adjust vertical dispersion. “KUDO is a very flexible speaker system and a great choice for the side arrays. They blend very nicely with the V-DOSC, and work great together,” Yakabuski considers. “The side arrays receive swapped input for example, House Left-Side Array is Stereo Input-Right - so that side seats get a stereo image,” the engineer explains, “and to reduce timing and overlap problems. We also reduce the size of the rig proportionally in all arrays as the size of the venue decreases. We spend some 38 | ProAudio Review | August 2008 The main PA comprised 15 L-Acoustics V-DOSC with three dV-DOSC speakers per side as mains for the larger venues, with 10 KUDO cabinets per side as side arrays. Wire Image

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of ProAudio Review - August 2008

ProAudio Review - August 2008 Contents Publisher's Page Broadcast News and New Products Yamaha Pocketrak 2G Olympus LS-10 Linear PCM Recorder Bench Test Marantz PMD620 Flash Recorder TASCAM DR-1 Portable Digital Recorder Tips From The Pros: Location/Production Audio Prosumer Portables in a Pro World Studio News and New Products Apogee Ensemble Solid State Logic Duende Mini FireWire DSP Live News and New Products Avril Lavigne's The Best Damn Thing World Tour Behringer Eurolive B412DSP and B415DSP Active Loudspeakers Gear for FOH Engineers — A PAR Contributors’ Wish List Contracting News and New Products Buyer's Guide Single Slice

ProAudio Review - August 2008

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