HELSINKI, FINLAND — 50 Cent performed two nights, in front of 17,000 fans, at Helsinki's largest venue, the Hartwall Arena. Since 50 Cent was not on tour, the Hartwall concerts were a one-off event, so his production used local services, calling upon Akun Tehdas, Finland's leading equipment rental provider, to supply all 50 Cent's sound requirements. "This was a typical large scale event for us," said Timo Liski of Akun Tehdas. The company had just taken delivery of their brand new J-Series line array system from d&b audiotechnik in Germany. Having already attended their J-Series training in the real world environment of Stuttgart's Martin Schleyer Halle, Liski was keen to show Finnish audiences what it could do.
"This was a concert of very high sound levels," he began, "especially in the low end. We rigged just eight J-SUBs a side to provide the kind of powerful low end this type of act needs. I must confess at first I thought we should put in some d&b B2 subwoofers as well, but when you stack the J-SUBs four high it takes them down to 30 Hz so there was really no need. There was definitely enough energy, -3dB to the main rig and the engineer Bill Barnett said he had lots of head room."
Barnett concurred. "Yeah, with 50 Cent there's a lot of 808 bass sound in there, normally I find I have to pull 50 Hz or thereabouts, and I don't recall having to do that in Helsinki. In fact, low end was really good, it was rattling anything that was loose. I saw empty Coke cans jumping around."
So what was it like using a foreign PA company? "It was very much situation normal for me. Akun Tehdas were no different from any other professional audio rental company; they did a great job."
The Hartwall is relatively small by arena standards, "We rigged ten J8s and two J12s a side," said Liski. "The out-fill was nine Q1s at a 45º angle to stage, then four Q7s as a near fill along front stage. The Arena is quite tight vertically, it is just twenty-one metres to the back of the hall but it is very steep. The predictive software for line array configuration proved perfect and the coverage was remarkably uniform. Bill provides a very solid mix with vocals firmly placed; energy is high, I measured a steady 103/104 dBA (Slow) with +4 to +5 dB on the peaks."
"This system was especially good for getting the vocals in the mix" concluded Barnett.
For more information, visit www.dbaudio.com.
