Whenever Cher goes on the road, it’s big news, and this year — for her eighth solo tour — you can expect a big production as well. Cher’s current “Dressed to Kill” (D2K) tour, which promotes her Closer to the Truth studio album — is currently underway, having kicked off in March at the US Airways Center in Phoenix it will wrap up in October with two shows at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre. Gross for the 63 mostly sold-out arena dates is expected to top $15 million.
And D2K delivers in every way, with the singer assembling an amazing outing that also features Pat Benatar/Neil Giraldo and Cyndi Lauper (who share supporting act duties) combined with elaborate sets, costumes, dancers, a great band and a spectacular audio system that so far has delighted both critics and fans alike. There are a few surprises along the way as well, such as Cher’s emotional duet on “I Got You Babe” with her late husband Sonny Bono, who appears on a huge onstage video screen.
Breaking Tradition
Breaking tradition in yet another manner, D2K is truly an international affair. The audio crew is a mostly a mixture of Europeans and Americans. Meanwhile, handling FOH duties is David Bracey, who after starting off doing small shows in Tasmania, found himself touring in the USA four years later, mixing English punk rockers Psychedelic Furs. Bracey has since gone on to mix The Cure, Depeche Mode, Robbie Williams (for 10 years), Massive Attack, Bjork, P!nk and Cher.
Interestingly, from a tech aspect, the Cher tour is kind of like getting the band back together. Also working with Bracey on D2K is systems engineer/FOH technician Ulf Oeckel and monitor engineers Horst Hartmann and Jon Lewis — all of which are reprising the same jobs they did on P!nk’s “Truth About Love Tour” last year.
Keeping with the international theme, the sound company handling the North American tour is Black Box Music of Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1992 by managing director Thilo “Baby” Goos, Black Box Music (BBM) has since grown into a large operation. The company complex includes full-on staging, lighting, sound and production services, with a 500-box L-Acoustics inventory and the ability to simultaneously support up to seven major tours.
In 2007, BBM expanded with major rehearsal facilities, which include backstage lounges, catering, production offices and bars for showcases, concerts and events. Nothing is small-scale. The largest hall is 30 by 30 meters with a height that’s nearly 46 feet and has the ability to hang 92 tons from its ceiling. Artists using the facility include 50 Cent, Marilyn Manson, Kelly Rowland, Incubus, Linkin Park, Frank Ocean and many others. On the touring side, BBM has been on worldwide outings with acts such as Sade and Rammstein and now, Cher’s D2K tour.
International Feel
For a European company, doing tours in North America could be complicated, and this is where experience is essential, such as knowing which ports to ship to and having the correct paperwork. “The customs paperwork is actually not so complicated, because we work with a carnet,” says BBM’s Jannice Kluck. “You have to submit a list describing every piece of equipment with their serial numbers, along with the country of origin. All our equipment is warehoused and bar-coded, so when setting up for a production, I can just scan the barcodes and get an immediate update on what’s available and in stock. This creates a database with all the serial numbers, so creating a carnet is fairly simple. That gear can work in North America for up to a year. We’re used to dealing those kind of international issues here.”
“We shipped the containers from our warehouse here in Berlin to North America for the rehearsals and then on to the start of the tour,” says BBM’s head of sound Markus Eichhofer. “The containers arrived at the port of New York and then were transported to the rehearsals by a US-based trucking company.”
According to Kluck, the process takes three weeks to come over via sea and three weeks back, “but the advantage is that we know every piece of our own equipment and the system is set up so well in advance that it’s really plug-and-play.”
All About The System
New to BBM on this tour is its use of L-Acoustic’s new K2 arrays, which are used with the larger K1 boxes to provide versatility in any venue. “The tour is a combination of 28 K1’s and 72 K2’s,” Eichhofer explains. “It’s really enough to do a show anywhere. The main hangs are K1; the side hangs are K2 and the side/rear hangs are K2 (for 270-degree coverage in an arena. The K1-SB subs are flown on top of the K1 hangs, so we have four arrays on each side of the stage. There are also 16 SB-28 dual-18 subs on the floor.”
As an all-L-Acoustics house (owning well over 500 of the French company’s speakers), BBM was involved with the K2 project fairly early on. “We were involved in a pilot [beta] phase, testing the K2 last August through November,” says Eichhofer. “The K2 has only a few dB less output than the K1 and at 56 kilograms per box, that’s really good. And the K1’s combine very well with K2’s, such as our system on the Cher tour.”
Having been out with the system on the road, tour systems engineer/FOH tech Ulf Oeckel is also impressed with the K2’s. “They have a perfectly identical sonic signature to the K1’s,” he says. “The results are great. The K2’s are excellent sounding, only 3 dB less headroom than the K1’s. They have impressive low-end for a 12-inch enclosure, with precise mids and brilliant, clear HF. They are lightweight and well-crafted, with fast, excellent rigging.”
The system also includes six K2’s used as downfill. “This application is great” Oeckel explains. “K2 as a downfill is great, because it delivers much better low-end from the flown source into the near areas and the transition between K1 and K2 is nearly undetectable.”
Oeckel adds that directivity is also a major issue, particularly in controlling where you don’t want sound to spill from the side P.A. “Thanks to the improved horizontal directivity options, we run the side K2’s asymmetrically 35-degrees inside to reduce the overlap and clean the transition zones between main and side and 55-degrees to the outside, to cover all audience to the 180-degree coverage line. A huge improvement is that the horizontal directivity goes down to 300 Hz, which is a big benefit for time alignment, directivity and sound location in the transition between two systems.”
Kudos on the system are shared by FOH mixer Bracey: “I love the K1 and now with the addition of the K2, the system has reached a new level of clarity, quality and impact to every corner of the arena.”
The Low, Low Down
In addition to the 24 flown K1-SB dual-15 subs, 16 additional SB-28 dual-18 subs provide ultra-low bass extension on the ground. “Thanks to the fantastic low-end of the flown sources,” Oeckel explains, “we can keep this sub source very quiet with a input gain of -8 dB. “We use a cardioid, closed-coupled sub arc, built from the 16 SB28 subs, six of which are used as cardioid sources to keep the back of the source as quiet as possible.”
Wireless
The majority of the RF signals on the tour are Sennheiser G2 IEMs and a few wireless mics. Cher sings into four Sennheiser SKM5200 mkII wireless mic transmitter bodies, each fitted with a cardioid dynamic 5235 capsule — and finished in white, silver, gold and black to coordinate with her elaborate stage wardrobe. Speaking of coordination, I asked about the issue of handling the RF spectra. “Dealing with the different frequencies in the U.S. and Europe for wireless mics and in-ear monitoring is not problem for us,” says Eichhofer. “In fact, we can even use the U.S. frequencies here in Europe as well, so there’s really no problem with festivals and touring. Although in Germany, you must have documents listing your frequencies, because, well… it’s Germany,” he says, laughing.
At FOH
Bracey is unabashedly a fan of the DiGiCo’s SD7 console. “It has been my desk of choice since the summer of 2008 and I wouldn’t consider mixing a serious show on anything else,” he says. And most of his effects come from the SD7’s onboard processing. “Internally, I use comps and gates, multi-band compressors, tube emulation, dynamic EQ and 10 FX units for reverbs, delays, chorus and pitch effects.” Bracey does keep an outboard reverb — a TC Electronic System 6000 — near the mix position, from which he uses the EMT plate emulation program.
With a near-100 box FOH rig at his fingertips (literally), Bracey might be tempted to push the house levels over the limit. However, according to systems engineer Oeckel, Bracey keeps the SPL’s at a comfortable 90-minute average reading of 102 dB at 125-feet. Pretty reasonable in the huge arena environments of the DTK tour, where levels could easily get out of control, while at the same time allowing plenty of headroom for dynamics and punch.
Having previously been out with Oeckel and monitor engineers Horst Hartmann and Jon Lewis, I wondered how Bracey felt this second time around, but also with BBM as well. “This is my second tour now with this crew,” Bracey says, “and although it felt comfortable on P!nk, this system from Black Box is a lot better designed. Certainly, it’s best I have ever toured with.”
A New Direction?
So given the success of this Cher tour and previous world and U.S. outings from other artists, would Black Box Music ever consider opening an office in the USA? “Possibly someday,” Kluck speculates, while remaining somewhat aloof on the subject, adding that “the cost of transporting entire systems from Germany to the U.S. is not really so much. And with the internet, email and a quick flight, it’s not really so difficult to work with U.S. clients, even though we are in Germany.”
“We’re doing more work in the USA,” Eichhofer added, “but we’re also doing more touring around the world, not only in Europe but also South Africa, Australia and Asia — wherever.”
Cher “Dressed to Kill” Tour
SOUND COMPANY
Black Box Music
AUDIO CREW
FOH Engineer: David Bracey
Monitor Engineer (Cher): Jon Lewis
Monitor Engineer (Band): Horst Hartmann
System Engineer & FOH Technician: Ulf Oeckel
Crew Chief: Ben Byford
Audio Techs: Simon Farell, Björn Boernecke
P.A. SYSTEM
Main P.A: (28) L-Acoustics K1 Line Source Arrays in two hangs of 14; (66) L-Acoustics K2 Line Source Arrays as downfills, side and rear P.A.
Front Fill: (6) L-Acoustics KARA Line Source Arrays
Subwoofers: (24) L-Acoustics K1-SB dual-15’s; (16) L-Acoustics SB-28 dual-18’s
Amplifiers: (15) L-Acoustics LA-RAK; (12) L-Acoustics LA8
FOH GEAR
Console: DiGiCo SD7 with 192kHz Minirack
Outboard: TC Electronic System 6000 with Icon remote; Yamaha SPX2000;
Tascam CD-RW 901SL CD recorder.
Drive System: (4) Lake LM-44 controllers; (3) Lake Digi-Tool F666 AES/EBU splitters
MONITOR GEAR
Consoles: (2) DiGiCo SD7’s
Outboard: TC Electronic System 6000 with Icon remote; Mindprint DTC Dual Tube Channel preamp/EQ/compressor.
I/O: (4) DiGiCo SD7 192 kHz Stageboxes
Monitors: (16) L-Acoustics 115XT-HiQ wedges
Side Fills: (6) L-Acoustics ARCS-II
Front Fills: (4) L-Acoustics 108P coaxial front fills
Amplifiers: (2) L-Acoustics LA-RAK’s; ButtKicker BKA-1000A.
STAGE GEAR
Microphones, Hardwired: (2) Audix D6; (4) Audio Technica ATM-450; (2) Neumann TLM 104; (2) Shure SM57
Microphones, Wireless: (4) Sennheiser SKM5200 mkII with with 5235 capsule UHF mics (Cher); Sennheiser EM500-G2 UHF wireless mic; Sennheiser SKP2000-DW plug-on UHF mic transmitter
Direct Boxes: (6) Radial Engineering JDI; (2) Radial Engineering ProD8 8-channel rack mount DI’s; Palmer PLS-022 line splitter; (2) Palmer PRM line-splitters
Intercom: ASL PS-278 Masterstation with ASL beltpacks
