LONDON — This year, the iTunes Festival was relocated to The Roundhouse in North London with over 60 artists playing live at the free event, which ran throughout July. The talent at iTunes included commercial mainstays such as Oasis, Kasabian, Franz Ferdinand and Snow Patrol, acoustic performers like Newton Faulkner, quirky performance artists with wide dynamic ranges like Bat for Lashes’ Natasha Khan and some traditional R&B.
All of that added up to something of a Molotov cocktail for iTunes production manager Stuart Turvill, system tech Dave Roden, and the Martin Audio W8LM Mini Line Array System.
Turvill has chaperoned iTunes’ steady growth to the Roundhouse, where he designed the audio infrastructure for the televised event, in collaboration with Martin Audio’s Jim Cousins and Andy Pardoe and consultant Nick Foots.
Dave Roden, the Stereophonics’ FOH engineer for 14 years, served as his system tech. Roden has worked with the full line array family on a succession of Stereos tours.
“We have only generally used the Minis as side-hangs on tour,” Roden said. “This is the first time I’ve mixed through them as a main system, and I must say they are really versatile, and a miracle for the size of the box.”
Jim Cousins noted that they are well suited for this kind of venue and particularly appropriate for a TV shoot. “They are physically unobtrusive, with good pattern control so they don’t fire the room up too much.”
As for the speakers, there were 10 W8LM per side with a W8LMD downfill, flown either side of the stage, and six more W8LMs (plus an W8LMD) rigged each side for outfills.
The bass hang consisted of six WMX per side, hung equidistant behind the inner/outer arrays, and a further eight WS218Xs under the stage apron. The WMXs have been designed to deliver mid bass and thump straight to the chest while the 218s provide the low bass rumble.
On stage there were 14 Martin Audio LE1500 floor monitors with Martin Audio W3s for infill and W2s on the VIP area. Martin Audio W2/W3 and Blackline S18 subs were used for drum fills.
Monitor engineer Will King added, “The LE1500’s are pretty awesome, some of the best wedge monitors I’ve heard. Everyone has commented on how good they sound, though I’d like to think some of that because of me.”
The FOH system was set up using Display, Martin Audio’s predictive software, processed by XTA DP226s in the rack and two XTA 448s at FOH, running AudioCore.
“This venue is in the round so you have a resonant frequency of 121Hz which shows up at 125Hz plus its relative harmonics,” noted Roden. “That resonance really lingers and all you can do is compensate for it in the system EQ, to save visiting engineers from hacking it out on their GEQs. But in essence, it’s the nature of the room and the system has actually dealt with it extremely well because it’s such a versatile box.”
As every show was recorded for television broadcast, stage equipment needed to be discreet and not interfere with sightlines, so the hangs were set wide and trimmed high. “Everything is dictated by the iTunes set design,” said Stuart Turvill.
For Roden, the gig was appealing in a number of ways. “I wanted to do this because it was an opportunity to work in a different role from my usual one, alongside a lot of people I already know and respect, and meet new colleagues in the bargain,” he said. “After all, living in Wales I don’t get to network a lot in London.”
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