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.
The French Tour “ Âge tendre et têtes de bois” derives its name from the famous Albert Raisner radio programme from the sixties on Europe 1. The teenagers of the time have now grown up, as have the artists that they listened to also, but the interest that they bear for the music of their youth, not without a certain nostalgia, remains intact. A fact that has not escaped Appels Productions…
Frank Alamo, Richard Anthony, Jean-Jacques Debout, François Deguelt, Gilles Dreu, Leny Escudero, Nancy Holloway, Los Machucambos, Michel Orso, Annie Philippe, Demis Roussos and Michèle Torr and one DJ from the sixties all performed in the same 4-hour long show, singing their main hits live, with an orchestra of 8 musicians on stage. The potential infrastructure and dimensions that the Tour could have taken on can only be imagined! However commercial limitations forced very strict conditions on the production; two trucks, two concerts a day (morning and evening), play for 3 or 4 days per week in venues holding several thousand people.
On the technical side, the set up started at 6.00am in the morning. Everything was ready at 11 o’clock and after a sound check and lunch, the public enters from 2.00pm, the first show goes from 3pm to 7pm, then dinner for the crew, and a second show from 8.30 to past midnight, break down is done from 1-4 in the morning, the journey to the next stage lasts 2 hours maximum, and the whole thing starts over again. Above all else was a drive for efficiency from equipment and the light and sound crews that would let the project work within the financial and time limitations!
The company Actes (http://www.spectacles-son-et-lumiere.com) was selected to cover the technical part of the tour. “A few years ago, I would have been forced to turn down this specification”, Joël Donger, Technical Manager of Actes explains. “But the arrival of both the Yamaha M7CL console, compact, light and powerful at the same time, with all its built in processing, and the Ethersound solutions made me rethink my choice. It was a sizeable investment, but it was the only way: either that or the Tour did not take place! Fortunately we were able to rely on the support of Yamaha and of Auvitran.. We have now completed over 50 concerts, and we haven’t had a system crash yet. We are pioneers: an all digital /all Ethersound configurations on a national Tour of this scope, it had never been done before!”
“I am from the ‘older generation’, all analogue, with big multipairs, and at first it didn’t make sense to me: it disturbed me to send everything in a single 5 mm diameter cable”, explains Fabrice Bouquillon, front sound engineer on the Tour, who has been working with Actes for 3 years. “I learnt how to use Ethersound Monitor software, which covers the network and patch management, in fact there is nothing complicated about it. At the outset, I warned that I knew little about these new technologies, but Jérémie Weber from Auvitran, came to see me on site, we chatted and he gave me confidence in Ethersound, by demystifying it. It’s a personal approach: once you manage to drop your preconceptions, you are ready. The young technicians, who already have affinities with IT, will probably go quicker than me”.
The Ethersound network, using redundant Cat5 cables, networks a playback/monitor M7CL-48 console (with Auvitran AVY-ES cars and an Aviom card for musicians playback), a DME64, 4x AD-8HR preamps taking signals from the stage, and one M7CL-48 at FOH with its 3 AVY-ES cards. FOH was primary master and then everything is connected in daisy chain.
On stage“The musicians use in-ear monitoring, via an Aviom system, thanks to the matching Mini-YGDAI card, that gives 16 mixes. They get a stereo mix from FOH , the premixed stereo drums, and each of the musicians mixes himself in mono above this at leisure, via his own small mixer. Playback is managed from the playback/monitor console by playback engineer Mathieu Plancher. The front sound comes out of the Omni outputs, passes through the Avalon 747, whose output is re-digitized and sent back into the network, via the DME that also feeds the mix to the Aviom”.
On the output side, the system selected is an Audio Performance line array. “We are very pleased with the system. The challenge is to cover the room as best as possible, without deafening the audience, and while ensuring a good intelligibility, both for the DJ, Hubert (formerly of Europe 1) and for the performers”, Joël Donger explains. Fabrice Bouquillon confirms: At times, I regret not having the time to angle my front speakers better in some rooms, but in spite of everything, we always start on time, with a correct, efficient and respectable sound. I chose to store one console setting per artist, who sings three or four songs in each set. It’s a starting point and then I take over, I am keen on having a live side. Every evening I work a different mix.
A second Tour of Âge tendre et tête de bois is already planned from October to December 2006. It will go via Paris, in the Palais des Congrès, to the Olympia and to the Zénith. The same crew will be onboard!
