In just one day in October 2006, Marco Borsato confirmed his status as the most popular artist in the Netherlands and Belgium by selling out all 320,000 tickets for his concert series. The ten concerts were staged in the Gelredome stadium in Arnhem, the Netherlands, and the event’s production company, The Entertainment Group, hired Netherlands audio production company Peak Audio to take care of the audio system.
Monitor engineer Eddie Mulrainey recently took Yamaha’s M7CL out on tour with The Beautiful South to promote the band’s new album, ‘Superbi’ (www.beautifulsouth.co.uk). It’s his first time on the road with a digital console - what made him ditch analogue?
The success of the French Tour Âge tendre et tête de bois, between March and June 2006, surprised even its producers! It could not have been organised without the latest Yamaha digital solutions: two M7CL-48 consoles, 4 AD8HR preamps, one DME 64, and everything connected by an Ethersound network on Cat5 cables.
Two Yamaha PM1Ds were used for the opening ceremony of the World Cup 2006 on Friday, June 9th before the first match at Munich’s Allianz Arena. In the event, in which about 1800 people took part on the pitch, 52 wireless microphones and various audio players had to be controlled. The complete processing was achieved by the PM1Ds with no additional external 19” devices.
8 Yamaha M7CL were operating continuously for four weeks at the four biggest fan festivals of the FIFA World Cup in Germany - and there were 0 failures!
The 6th of June 2006 saw an exceptional concert take place in the Olympic stadium in Munich. Featuring works from Wagner to Bernstein performed by Placido Domingo, soprano Diana Damrau, pianist Lang Lang, the Bavarian State Opera Orchestra and choir, the Bavarian Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra and choir and the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra all together on stage, with an interlude from the German band “die Söhne Mannheims” featuring Xavier Naidoo, the event can only be described as truly spectacular.
First published in 1952, the New Musical Express or NME, has always based its success around being the champion of new and emerging rock music. It was the first organisation to publish a British singles chart some 54 years ago and since 1953 has organised regular awards and poll winners concerts across the UK with the aim of promoting tomorrows big stars in front of an ever demanding audience.
Holiday On Ice is a part of Joop van den Ende's Stage Entertainment Group, Europe's leading live-entertainment production company and with five shows performing in over 20 countries each year. “Holiday On Ice” is by far the most international and long-running quality entertainment show around.
"I first became acquainted with a Yamaha PM5D in July last year just before I was due to tour with David Gray," said freelance sound engineer Mark Jones who mixed front of house for the highly acclaimed artist. "I wanted to use a digital desk on the tour to get the right sound quality so I took a PM5D along to David Gray's Church Studio’s in London where I put it through its paces for a few days. It didn't take long to get to grips with it and I found it intuitive and straightforward to use."
Another resounding Brit Awards at Earls Court was confirmation ‐ if confirmation were needed - that all things within the British music business are in remarkably good health; including the application of the latest audio technology and it’s leading adherents.
Equipment on monitor, recording and communications duty at the huge event. On the live event scene in Italy (and at European level), 2005 will without doubt be remembered as the year of the mega-concert by raunchy Italian rocker Luciano Ligabue at Reggio Emilia’s Campovolo.
A PM1D and a PM5D at Piazza del Quirinale for the New Year’s Eve concert.
When a confirmed analogue man like Status Quo’s sound engineer, Andy May, admits to being a convert to digital mixing desks, particularly Yamaha digital desks, it makes one wonder if the days of analogue mixing are numbered!
For their recent UK tour, The Coral’s sound was mixed using Yamaha digital mixing desks. Leading Liverpool based pro audio specialists, Ad Lib Audio, supplied a PM5D for Front of House and the latest edition to their stable, one of Yamaha’s new M7CL desks for monitors.
The fourth International Circus Festival took place at the Palais des Sports in Grenoble between 25th and 28th November 2005. After three days of rehearsals, the greatest circus artists faced a jury The final performances, presented by the famous television presenter Jean-Pierre Foucault, were broadcast on French national television. The audio system design had to overcome many technical difficulties, but, Auvitran, Izo [service provider], Nexo, Palais des Sports [production and accommodation] and Yamaha joined together to make this Festival a real technical success. The solution involved setting up one of the first French “totally digital” systems, using Ethersound technology over the entire signal path.
