ATK Audiotek supported the 56th Annual Grammy Awards, held at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Jan. 26. The show, hosted by L.L. Cool J, was broadcast on CBS. The 56th event included performances by 56 different artists and acts.
Beyonce joined husband Jay-Z, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney performed together again and Carole King paired with Sara Bareilles. Other combos included Daft Punk, Nile Rodgers, Stevie Wonder and Pharrell Williams; Robin Thicke and Chicago; Katy Perry and Juicy J; Imagine Dragons with Kendrick Lamar; and Metallica with Lang Lang. Top winners included Daft Punk, Lorde and Macklemore and Ryan Lewis.
ATK Audiotek provided the main P.A. system for the awards ceremony, augmenting the JBL loudspeakers in the house rig with additional JBL P.A. gear, and also put its recently acquired DiGiCo digital consoles into service.
Among the pros overseeing the Grammy audio system were, pictured here from left, Hank Neuberger, Grammy Awards telecast sound supervisor; Bryan Bradley, vice president, general manager, JBL Professional; and Michael Abbott, Grammy Awards audio director.
ATK Audiotek provided four arrays, each with 12 VerTec VT4889 full-size line array elements plus two arrays with six VT4880A full-size arrayable subwoofers each. An additional 12 VRX932 Constant Curvature loudspeakers were used for front fill.
The Staples Center’s permanent JBL VerTec line array system, which ATK Audiotek also put to use, includes eight arrays, each with 11 to 13 JBL VT4889DP-DA powered line array elements. Two installed fill clusters each also contain four VT4889DP-DA elements; they are positioned to cover the end seating areas. The permanent system also includes four subwoofer arrays, each with six VT4880A full-size arrayable subwoofers.
This was also the third consecutive year that ATK has relied on DiGiCo consoles for the production of “Music’s Biggest Night,” with this year’s show marked the first outing for the company’s latest purchases.
ATK, the audio production provider for the Recording Academy’s annual music celebration since the telecast permanently relocated to the Staples Center in downtown L.A. 14 years ago, made the switch to DiGiCo consoles in 2012.
This year, the console complement included an SD10 for Mikael Stewart, FOH production mixer and ATK’s vice president of special events, plus an SD7 for Ron Reaves, FOH music mixer, seated alongside Stewart.
“Everybody who comes through the Grammys leaves happy, and all I use is the onboard processing,” said Reaves. “But my partner in crime at the Grammys, Mikael Stewart, uses the Waves plugins quite extensively. He mixes all the dialog and the production elements, so he makes use of the DNS plugin on some of the podium micas.”
Stewart, whose console was directly connected to a DiGiCo SoundGrid server, used the Waves Dialog Noise Suppression plugin to reduce the room regeneration coming back in to the microphones and also made use of the Waves C6 Multiband Compressor.
Tom Pesa, the A stage monitor engineer, and Michael Parker, monitor engineer for the B stage, each mixed on an SD7 with a redundant engine.
This year, for the first time, an SD8-24 — supplied by Hi-Tech Audio for the occasion — was positioned backstage at A2 world, and that enabled an assistant engineer to more efficiently monitor signal distribution throughout the venue.
As in previous years, Parker and Pesa each accessed common head amps in the four SD-Racks positioned backstage. But this year, in another first, two SD-Racks were added in parallel in order to provide Reaves with discrete preamp control at FOH.
“Those were running MADI to his console. Staying at 48 kHz, we got an entire rack down one MADI cable instead of two,” said Jeff Peterson, ATK’s system designer. An additional four SD-Racks were dedicated to outputs.
ATK’s recent purchase included of six consoles — two SD10s, two SD7s and two SD5s — plus 14 SD-Racks.
