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.
On the same site that hosted a historic date on U2’s 1997 tour, Claudio Maioli (“Liga’s” manager) produced and organized, along with Friends & Partners and Barley Arts, the event that drew a record crowd estimated at 180,000 and was immortalized in a DVD that had already sold 100,000 copies just two months after its release .
Yamaha products were used in strategic points of the enormous technical machine that swung into action at Campovolo, where no less than four stages were built, three of which (Main, Theatre and Solo) were connected with long catwalks.
In the wings of the main stage - an impressive structure 90 metres wide and 26 high - two Yamaha PM5000 consoles were in the capable hands of Klaus Hausherr and his assistant, Giorgio Contaldo, responsible for the delicate job of monitor mixing.
Hausherr explained, “After several months’ design work and a pair of warm-up dates abroad, we moved in to the venue for set-up. The monitor system was based on specific requests by the artist, and was all under the banner of no-nonsense rock ‘n’ roll with no esoteric frills – so, apart from in particular situations, no In Ear Monitors! In fact, we used speakers on the small stages as well, apart from when Luciano sang with Mauro Pagani – when he used IEM, as the impact of the PA, which was quite far away, could have caused sync problems.”
Of the two PM5000 desks, supplied (as was the huge sound reinforcement system) by the event’s audio contractor, Renato Fumasoli, one was used as a master and dedicated to Ligabue, while the other was use for the support bands (guest artists included Elisa and Edoardo Bennato) and services, such as talkback, etc. In fact, Hausherr added, “With a venue of this enormous size, the role played by communications was anything but secondary, and always had to be kept under control.”
Even if used with conventional speaker systems, certain features of the PM 5000 were particularly exploited, as Hausherr explained: “I really appreciate these desks, because they have a lot of utilities and outputs, enabling to handle all the requirements of events of that scale in a very flexible manner. All together, we used 96 channels, with 33 for Luciano alone on the Main stage, sixteen on the Theatre stage and four on the Solo stage. I handled everything with the VCAs – one for the Solo stage and another of the Theatre stage, so I was able to control everything completely separately.”
As far as monitor feeds were concerned, even if Ligabue currently has a 4-piece band, which backed him on the main stage (on the Vintage stage – at the other end of the concert area – the artist sang with Clandestino, the group he had his first hits with), a considerable quantity of monitors was installed. “Luciano had a stereo set-up out front, which consisted in two pairs of enclosures,” explained Hausherr, “two more behind him and a pair at each end of the stage front, to ensure coverage in every situation. The guitarist and bass player had a pair of monitors each, the drummer a classic drum-fill with a subwoofer, plus a small mixer with eight aux lines, to enable him to control a custom mix in his cans. The set-up was completed by a pair of line arrays flown as side fills.”
Stating that he was very satisfied with the results, the Swiss engineer concluded, “The PM5000 is very suited to monitor work, because it has twelve stereo aux sends and eight mono, so there are 32 in all - that’s a lot! This feature makes for a really versatile desk – so much so that I’ve also used it on FOH duty in demanding situations such as the “July Sounds Good” season staged at Rome’s auditorium last summer.”
In the centre of the sea of people at the mega-event, the FOH platform was in the expert hands of a veteran of the Italian rock scene - Ligabue’s sound engineer, Paolo “Red” Talami. Behind him, another Yamaha desk (an O2R), used as a production console – a role of fundamental importance for an event of that size in such a vast area, as Talami stressed, adding: “The O2R received all the talkback signals from the various stages – stage manager Tony Soddu, the monitor engineers etc., which it then distributed over the whole site.”
Even if the main consoles were strictly analogue (according to the artist’s requests), digital technology had the important job of ensuring signal transport, with a 1,300-metre fibre optic ring network by Optocore. This was under the supervision of the German manufacturer’s Product Manager, Luca Giaroli, who explained, “Considering the large scale of the location, Optocore was the ideal choice, as our systems are able to cover considerable distances without any risk of signal loss or interference.”
The recording of the DVD of the concert was done by Telerecord (video) and Amek Ferrari and Vanis Dondi’s White Mobile (audio), with three of the fleet of technical vehicles lined up back-stage. The signals of the 96 audio channels were taken from one of the Optocore network’s eight peripheral stations, as Ferrari explained, ”For safety reasons regarding clock, we decided to convert the signals back into analogue, after which they entered our twelve remoteable Yamaha AD 824 preamplifiers, before being converted once again into digital. One of the two outputs of the converters was connected to ten HD recorders, which handled the recording, and the other to one of our two DM 2000 consoles, to allow the producers to have a “pre-listen’ of the concert.”
The White Mobile artic is a well known sight at high profile live events and, as well as the two DM 2000 (connected in cascade mode) and the AD 824, its hardware also includes a Yamaha SW10 amplified subwoofer, a pair of NS10 Pro near-field monitors and a YDG 2030 digital graphic equalizer for the main monitors.
