Features

After the U.S. leg for their Double Down Live tour, ZZ Top headed north of the border for a string of shows in Canada, supported by Briere Production Group and gear from Martin Audio.

Black Box Music supported the European tour for Rammstein with an L-Acoustics K1/KUDO system that "provided high SPLs in all audience positions and a balanced frequency response," according to K System Engineer Ulf Oeckel.

It was a big night of big performances (like Green Day, pictured here, doing a number with the cast of their Broadway-bound American Idiot musical) and an even bigger night for the people behind the scenes. You know, the people who make it all look easy. FOH Editor Bill Evans was there for the rehearsals with the "A Team."

We put the question of volume control strategies to the ProAudioSpace tribe (still not a member? Go to www.ProAudioSpace.com – now!) and obviously hit a chord. We got almost 100 responses – some of them very detailed – outlining individual approaches and strategies. Here are just a few excerpts from those responses. You can find them all in the Forums section of PAS.

LONDON – Sound engineer Randy Meullier, who is using a Soundcraft Vi6 for the U.K. and European legs of Alice Cooper's Theater of Death tour, credited Pete Russell at SSE Audio Group for giving him access to his first-choice console.

HITACHINAKA, Japan – The Rock in Japan concert, produced by Rockin' On publisher Keiichi Shibuya, was held for the 10th year in 2009. More than 165,000 attendees came to Hitachi Beach Park to hear performances by some 150 Japanese artists, including Eikichi Yazawa, Unicorn, Ulfuls and Perfume.

LONDON – Florence and the Machine used a combined iLive FOH and monitor system on its European tour this fall, which included dates in the U.K., Germany, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Holland and Austria. iLive was subsequently specified on dates in the U.S. and Canada, and rented from SRD Systems in Kent by management production company, Britannia Row, for a performance as part of the Electric Proms at Camden's Roundhouse.

POTTERS BAR, U.K. – Soundcraft Studer recently produced and tested the first Studer Vista large-format consoles on its new U.K. production line, which has taken on manufacturing for Vista, OnAir 3000 and Router production formerly done in the Studer Regensdorf facility near Zurich in Switzerland.

LONDON – The new self-powered Meyer Sound UP-4XP loudspeaker recently made its debut at the Royal Albert Hall's renovated Elgar Room. The UP-4XP is noted for combining the advantages of a remote DC power supply and the acoustic power output of a three-way self-powered system.

OSLO – In preparation for President Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech and related music events, the sound system at Oslo City Hall was upgraded with Allen & Heath digital mixing and audio distribution systems and a Renkus-Heinz Iconyx IC32 Digitally Steerable Array system.

I met with Joe O'Herlihy, U2's audio director and FOH mixer, in the Nevada desert just outside of Las Vegas. U2 was playing in Sam Boyd Stadium on Oct 23. This was one of the many stops on the bands' very ambitious 360º tour. Ambitious not for the amount of dates played, but because of the size, scope and magnitude of the 360º project.