Quick & Efficient
Eighth Day Sound is also providing a sizeable d&b house system for the tour, including two hangs of 20 J-Series enclosures with eight cardioid-configured flown J-Subs per hang for mains, another 16 J-Series boxes for side hangs, and a dozen Q-Series loudspeakers for center clusters.
Nine more J-Subs per side are deployed on the floor, and there’s a scattering of d&b M4 wedges on stage for the band.
House system tech Arno Voortman of Eighth Day uses both Rational Acoustics Smaart and Morset Sound WinMLS for analysis and tuning of the PA, a process that proved relatively quick and efficient at this particular venue.
“Because it’s so similar to an American arena, the process is pretty straightforward for me here at the O2,” Voortman tells me. “I use Smaart for the low-end timeline and then WinMLS for everything else; both tools do the job perfectly.”
Voortman, who also worked on Madonna’s previous major tour, is a big fan of d&b for its ease-of-use and versatility; and as far as processing goes, he works to let the loudspeakers do all the talking. “I find DSP is often being abused these days, as in over-processing, which can actually make it a detrimental thing. Suddenly systems sound worse instead of better! If a system is already good, why should you tweak the hell out of it?”
A Lot Going On
Returning to FOH, I asked Curtin about the presence of dual monitor engineers on the tour. “It’s pretty crazy during a performance at the monitor position, as there is a lot of talkback going on and it tends to get very vocal,” he replies. “For one person to concentrate on Beyoncé, the girls, and the band, would be very taxing.”
In addition to the 12 channels of Sennheiser wireless microphones, performers are outfitted with Shure PSM1000 in-ear monitors.
“The flexibility of the RF when working with Sennheiser is great, because unlike many manufacturers, if you buy something in a certain range in the U.S. then come over to Europe, you can re-tune it,” Curtin notes. “On the flip-side, Shure took hold of the in-ear world when they brought out the diversity receiver belt packs with the PSM1000s, which made our RF and monitor guys very happy in terms of stability.”
Come show time, the system was being driven very hard, but there was little distortion to detract from the experience. The band was right on the money, and the star performer’s high-energy voice was conveyed with ample intelligibility.
Two highlights were Beyoncé being zip-wired several hundred feet to FOH to perform the latter part of the show from her “Bey Stage” (wireless was absolutely solid), and the finale, where lighting designer LeRoy Bennett unleashed what he calls a “Wall of Inferno” delivered by more than 1,000 fixtures, including 450 SGM X-5 strobes and 220 Clay-Paky Sharpy washes.
Over the top of it all was a professional, powerhouse audio system. Hats off to Eighth Day Sound on a tremendously smooth and impressive production.
Paul Watson is the editor for Europe for Live Sound International and ProSoundWeb.