The Briere Production Group (BPG) was responsible for audio and lighting during the first Canadian date of the No Fear Energy Music Tour in Vancouver’s UBC Thunderbird Arena, with the rolling U.S./Canadian tour featuring heavy metal favorites Lamb of God, Children of Bodom, As I Lay Dying, God Forbid and Municipal Waste.
BPG System Techs Rico Domirti and Brandon Hestdalen wanted to provide exceptional audio quality despite some built-in challenges with the show and the venue.
“Our challenge was to supply the appropriate rig for this volume event, while maintaining ideal coverage,” says Domirti. “We wanted to fill out the system because we didn’t want to be pushing it real hard throughout the show with a lot of SPLs that would adversely affect the clarity and sound quality.
“So we added a couple more boxes to our standard arena package of 12 Martin Audio W8LCs per side and supplemented two stacks of six WSX subs per side with four more WS 218 subs ground-stacked center stage to provide extra punch up the center of the room.
“This was all done to give the touring FOH techs added headroom and give our gear a little room to breath, and so that it wouldn’t get pounded all night long. Their engineers did a pretty amazing job in terms of keeping it down to a respectable level.”
As described by Hestdalen, “we have no choice where we put the PA, so it ends up being 70 feet wide from side to side – that’s where they have the rigging points.”
So we brought the rig up with a higher trim height of 25 feet to help open things up and create some air before it hit the audience,” Domirti adds, “and during show, the people 3 nfeet in front of the PA had incredible sound. Adding a couple more units at the bottom of the hang allowed us to provide greater coverage directly in front of the stage as well.”
The system also included Martin Audio amplification, Yamaha M7CL consoles for the opening acts, a Digidesign Profile with a ProTools rig for the headliner, and Dolby Lake processing.
Asked about reactions to the sound, Domirti mentions that Lamb of God’s engineer thought the Martin Audio was a “nice sounding box with very little EQ on it, he did very little off his desk as far as third-octave, and it was nice and flat for the most part. We were probably up to 110 dB, but it was a really clean sound.
”Overall, the touring engineers were amazed and were not interested in blowing the audience out of the water with pure SPL. Their mixes were dialed in, their sounds were crisp and clear and optimal clarity throughout the dynamic range was maintained. Martin’s commitment to creating an amazing product for the human voice was evident that night, vocal quality was not compromised at all.”
