Yamaha PM5000 large analogue mixer delivers headroom for audience of 320.000

Photo: Lou Beerens

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.

Will Jan Pielage was responsible for the overall audio system and FOH mixing. He produced a shortlist of 5 requirements for the production’s audio system: dynamic range, dynamic range, dynamic range, more dynamic range and then even more dynamic range. ‘Marco’s concert is so extremely dynamic and live, we had no choice but to use the two most powerful systems we could find: a massive, carefully designed speaker system using d&b J8, J12, J-Sub, C3, Q1, Q7 and B2 components; and a Yamaha PM5000 as the main FOH console. I have tried many brands of both speaker systems and consoles, but no other system even comes close to the dynamic range I could get out of this combination. The Gelredome, being one of the better sounding stadiums in the Netherlands, allowed us to go all the way with the speaker system. In total 138 top enclosures and 36 subs were used, most of them flown straight from the stadium’s roof, with some ground support for the line array and the large clusters’.

At monitors Paul Duwel mixed the band on PM1D, and Erik Hendriks mixed the orchestra. At FOH the band was mixed by Will Jan Pielage himself using the PM5000 and the orchestra was mixed by Tijmen Zinkhaan. Will Jan Pielage designed the overall sound system, together with system techs Barak Koren and Paul van Baasbank. Will Jan: ‘The only disadvantage of using a PM5000 instead of a PM1D at FOH are the three racks filled with gates, compressors, EQ’s and effects, normally built into the PM1D. But the PM5000’s automation really makes up for this, the faders and effect routing are automated so we could recall complete fader settings as well as FX routing presets for every individual song. And the PM5000 delivered, giving me the extreme dynamics I needed for this job. The result was one of the best sounding live performances I ever heard, perfectly matching the enormous energy Marco Borsato radiates to his 32000 member audience, night after night, ten nights in a row.’

More information www.theentertainmentgroup.nl