After a summer of listening to stadium shows, I recently traveled to Europe to immerse myself in (hopefully) one last outdoor blast of art and science before entertainment moves indoors. I made the trip hoping circumstances would align that would allow me to hear some really great concert sound. Admittedly, I was going for greatness because the right balance of conditions doesn’t come together often. But I was hoping to hear audio indicative of what we are capable of as an industry, using products that when we get it right, are the result of 60 years of concert sound technology development.
It is my respectful opinion that the sound reinforcement industry doesn’t get the sound right as much as we would like to think it does. I’m speaking of the kind of sound we get when all the human, technical and environmental conditions that contribute to a sound system’s personality are closely aligned. When the laws of physics don’t get in the way. I was simply hoping to go to a show and not be distracted by all the not-so-willing-suspension-of-disbelief thoughts that typically occupy my listening, and probably yours, during a gig.
I came to hear two of David Gilmour’s six performances in Rome’s iconic Circus Maximus, an immense venue of great antiquity where the Romans raced chariots in 200 BC. I wanted to hear how Colin Norfield, Gilmour’s house engineer of 30 years and a most accomplished practitioner of our craft, brought everything together in musical performance. I figured if there was any chance I could find a gig to listen to this fall, where all the elements might align it would be David Gilmour in the Circo Massimo with Mr. Norfield at the desk.
It’s been over 50 years since Pink Floyd released Dark Side of the Moon, the third highest-selling album of all time, yet only two months since David Gilmour debuted his latest Luck and Strange project. If you know Mr. Gilmour’s catalog, then you know this music enjoys loads of space and depth. Conveniently, Gilmour provides remarkably good material for showcasing a properly configured, high-wattage, large-format loudspeaker system — by folks that know what they are doing — to 30,000 fans on a flat field.
Thankfully, the human, technical, and environmental conditions did in fact align and what I heard on those two Roman evenings was fantastic audio. The P.A. sounded amazing, very natural, transparent and unaffected, offering impressive clarity and projection with plenty of headroom. On the big numbers, the system magnified Gilmour’s massive guitar tones with ease. Yet, during an acoustic rendition of ‘The Great Gig In The Sky,’ the P.A. took on a more lilting, intimate personality, delivering the beautiful 5-voice chorale so effectively as to seemingly shrink the physical distance between artist and listener.
I could really appreciate what 60 years of sound system development has brought our community. I could tell that what I was hearing was the result of a significant amount of very good work. It happened because of a talented and experienced Britannia Row / Clair Global crew, deploying what I felt was an ideal balance of tools and treatments, on nights where thankfully, the conditions (74 degrees and 75% humidity at showtime) were right and the system could really shine.
And the audio crew was first-rate, throughout. As noted, the FOH engineer is Colin Norfield, Dee Miller is monitor engineer, Fergus Mount is crew chief and RF tech, Terence Hulkes is the system engineer, Paul Gardiner is the stage technician and Damon Iddins is responsible for archival recording and effects playback.
At FOH: Colin Norfield
“In the late 1960’s I played bass in a professional band,” Norfield recalls. “I used to work at the Orange amplifier shop in London’s New Compton Street between gigs. One day, Cliff Cooper, the guy that owned Orange, asked me if I was available in the next few weeks. He had put together a small P.A. system for talent agent Arthur Howes. Arthur used to bring American artists over to the UK to play here and in Air Force bases in Germany. He needed someone to engineer.”
That first move was just a start. “Back then, there was no such thing as a P.A. hire company and Cliff asked me to take his P.A. out for a half-dozen shows. That time it was for The Temptations. So I did it, everyone was happy, and two weeks later, Cliff asked if I’d do it again: The Four Tops, Richie Havens, Wilson Pickett, Diana Ross, Gladys Knight and many others. When it started, I had said to myself ‘I’ll just do this for a while and then get back to bass playing when I get bored.’ Well, here I am, Pink Floyd, David Gilmour, Frank Sinatra, Toto, Cliff Richard, Oasis, Zucchero… I still have basses, they just hang on the wall; I hardly ever play them.”
I first heard Norfield mix on Pink Floyd’s Division Bell tour in 1994, supporting studio engineer Andy Jackson. Immediately, I knew I was hearing something that my ears really liked. “I mix as a musician,” Norfield explains. “I don’t mix as a sound engineer. I feel the music, and it goes out through my hands. I do not think about the process of mixing, I’m just trying to feel the music that’s coming off the stage. People may be surprised to learn that I don’t think about technical stuff when I am mixing. In fact, I do not see myself as technically-minded at all. That’s why I’ve got Terence Hulkes with me out front, and he is all over it. I’m 74 now. I just want to push a fader up until it sounds like what I want it to sound like,” he says.
“Philosophically, I believe that if you want clarity, you need to make adequate space in the mix for things. Otherwise, what you get is an over-saturation of sound. Often the sonic spectrum is overloaded, and when that happens, you have to make space for things, which often means deliberately losing stuff to make that space.”
Norfield keeps his mix setup fairly simple, working on a DiGiCo Quantum 852. “I use onboard compressors and gates that are native to the console. I don’t compress much, because I want the music to have life, but sometimes in live, compressors are a necessity. Musicians are human, and often they play differently. You have to bring some normality to those scenarios, and compressors can help you do your job. Regarding gates, I would prefer not to use them. I’d rather let a drum be a drum and spend time tuning a ring-out than rely on a noise gate, but sometimes you have to use them. Often, I’ll have gates on toms, but just leave them wide open in the event I need them. Now if a drum kit is surrounded by guitar amps, you have to do something.”
Norfield also travels with his FOH effects in an outboard rack. “I have three Yamaha SPX-990s that contain reverbs and pitch changes, and two TC Electronic D2 delays. These devices are MIDI’d, so they change every song. I prefer these, as they are better quality than the console’s onboard options. Also, I run the subs off an aux as an effect because I feel you can be much more artistic as a mixer if you configure your system this way.”
In terms of the P.A. rig, “L-Acoustics K1 is my preferred speaker system, it does what it says on the box. But if I am honest, I don’t think there is a lot of difference between line array systems. When line arrays first came out, the manufacturers promised we would save truck space as we only needed one array hang per side. Well, that was proven wrong as we hang side arrays for every show.”
Years ago, Colin outgrew running an analog desk. “In the old days, it used to be ‘give me an 8-channel Orange desk or more recently — a Midas H3000 and I’m good.’ In 1994 Pink Floyd had four desks. two Yamaha PM4000s, a Yamaha PM3000 and one 16-channel Midas XL3 adapted for quad surround. When we took David out solo, I started on an H3000. But we had more stereo channels than the console power supply could handle, so I switched to a DiGiCo D5 with two racks of outboard gear. The DiGiCo Quantum 852 I’m running on this tour is working great,” he says.
“I use digital desks just like they were analog boards in many respects. I keep the EQ and gain settings pretty much the same for every song. The snapshots I use accommodate instrument changes on any given song — mostly faders, mutes, and auxes.”
Monitor Engineer Dee Miller
Dee Miller manages a very busy monitoring environment that includes d&b audiotechnik M2 wedges for Gilmour and bassist Guy Pratt; and Ultimate Ears IEMs on Shure PSM-1000’s for BV’s, second guitar, drums and keyboards. “I’m managing 82 sends, as we also have Aviom personal mixers for the drummer and SR keyboard player Rob Gentry, and a KLANG system for SL keyboardist Greg Phillinganes. I send Greg loads of individual stems and he takes it from there. He is the only artist on the KLANG, and it came to us as his request at the beginning of the tour. So between David, the Aviom system, the KLANG and the other mixes, there’s plenty going on.”
Miller is mixing on an SSL Live 550 Plus console. “We are using quite a lot of stuff on the desk. The SSL is my 100% favorite desk, and I was quite involved with it from the beginning. I had been mixing for Peter Gabriel when he bought the company, and I got to take the desk out on its first UK tour.” We discussed mixing both ears and wedges simultaneously. “It can get quite difficult, as I am primarily there for David. Thankfully, the desk has two solo buses, which makes things much easier. I do have the desk set up in scenes, one per song. I’ve also got about a dozen onboard effects. Mostly plates and other reverbs and some delays. Thankfully, the drummer and keyboard players mostly take care of themselves!”
System Engineer Terence Hulkes
The tour’s system engineer Terence Hulkes serves as a perfect foil to Colin Norfield’s non-technical music-centric view of mixing.
“I’ve always been into technical things, like computers, and my interest in sound systems was really an extension of that. I’m 37 years old, and I was right on the front edge when digital started to come out. Being there for the (analog to digital) transition has been quite beneficial to me.”
As noted, the FOH console is a DiGiCo Quantum 852. “It’s a pretty new desk and the first time I have had a chance to work on it, and so far its been working really well for us. I find it to be a big improvement over the SD-7’s. Having the Quantum 852 gets us the familiar DiGiCo workflow with improved reliability of updated hardware. Also, a new desk keeps the fun factor up for me and Colin, and we really like the layout of the Quantum. On stage, we have standard DiGiCo SD racks with 32-bit cards installed,” Hulkes explains.
“Aside from the D2s and SPX990s and an M6000, everything else is internal to the console. Colin wants the music to breathe, and therefore we are very careful with our dynamics processing. This is very dynamic music, and so Colin wants the sources to be open and play out — not controlled. Compressors are applied very carefully and only when absolutely necessary; there are some songs are naturally meant to be big and loud.”
The P.A. is a standard L-Acoustics K1 system. The main L/R arrays are 14 deep K1 with two K2 downfills, and six K1SB low-frequency line extenders on top to help with LF directivity. Side arrays are 12 K1 with two K2 downfill. Ground subs are a KS-28 array arranged in a spaced arc in front of the stage. Amplifiers are L-Acoustics LA-12X.
“The system processing uses standard L-Acoustics P1’s, which provide a dual redundant AVB interface, and include the M1 measurement suite, which we have found to be very useful,” Hulkes notes, adding “we usually run the P.A. at about 98 dB A-weighted, over a 10-15 minute average at FOH.”
Smooth Sailing
Those who tour appreciate how challenging it can be to get everything right on show day despite your best and sincere efforts. Fortunately, on the two evening shows in Rome I attended, conditions were favorable, causing very few distractions in my head, and I became a listener just like everyone else. That illusive combination of setting, weather, artist, program, equipment and crew did a wonderful job of presenting the performance, but also showcasing the technological advancements our colleagues have invented for us over the last 60 years. For this listener, someone who has observed the development of live sound for almost as long, it was a real joy to hear a big P.A. when everything was right.
After six dates in Rome, the Luck and Strange tour played six nights at London’s Royal Albert Hall, followed by four shows in Los Angeles, and wrapping up on Nov. 10, 2024, following five performances at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
Danny Abelson was a partner in Turbosound, helped introduce the ATI Paragon console, and still has his IATSE card.
David Gilmour’s Luck and Strange World Tour
AUDIO CREW
- Sound Company: Britannia Row / Clair Global
- FOH Engineer: Colin Norfield
- Monitor Engineer: Dee Miller
- Systems Engineer: Terence Hulkes
- Crew Chief / RF Coordinator: Fergus Mount
- Stage Technician: Paul Gardiner
- Playback/ Archival Recording: Damon Iddins
P.A. GEAR
- P.A. System: L-Acoustics K1/ K2/ K1SB/ KS-28
- Drive Processing: L-Acoustics P1/ M1 Measurement
- Amps: L-Acoustics LA-12X via redundant AVB network
FOH GEAR
- FOH Console: DiGiCo Quantum 852
- Outboard Gear: Yamaha SPX990, TC Electronic D2 delays
MON GEAR
- Monitor Console: SSL Live 550 Plus
- Outboard: Aviom personal mixers; KLANG 3D IEM processing
- Monitors: d&b audiotechnik M2 wedges
- IEMs: Ultimate Ears earpieces, Shure PSM-1000 RF IEM hardware
- Mics: Shure B91A, B52, SM57, Beta 98; Neumann KM-184; AKG C414; Austrian Audio 818; Radial Engineering DIs
