Audio Pro

Live Earth, Concerts for a Climate in Crisis, the 24-hour, seven-continent concert series that took place on July 7th broke all records to become the largest global music entertainment event ever held.

Bringing together more than 100 music artists and an audience of over two billion, the concerts were led by the Alliance for Climate Protection, chaired by former US vice president Al Gore, and were designed to bring attention  to the issue of climate change on a global basis.

To assist in this huge challenge, Gore worked with Live Earth founder Kevin Wall, the worldwide executive producer of Live 8, an event that brought together one of the largest audiences in history to combat poverty two years ago.

As such, a series of eight concerts were staged: at Giants Stadium in New York; Wembley Stadium in London; Aussie Stadium in Sydney; Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro; the Coca-Cola Dome in Johannesburg; Makuhari Messe in Tokyo; the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai; and the HSH Nordbank Arena in Hamburg.

In addition, unparalleled media architecture of more than 500 media partners covering television, radio, internet and wireless channels in more than 130 countries ensured maximum global coverage for the message.

In London, the newly opened Wembley Stadium was the backdrop for the show, thus hosting its second major music event in a matter of days, the first being the tribute concert for Diana, Princess of Wales, the previous weekend.

Once again the concert sound was provided by UK firm Britannia Row Productions, supported by a host of manufacturers to ensure a seamless audio production. And, as with all modern large-scale productions, the quick changeovers between performers called for the utmost agility in the audio chain.

As such Britannia Row kept the digital console configuration used for Diana, with DiGiCo D5s in abundance providing immediate parameter reset according to each performer’s requirements, thus helping with adherence to the strict time structure in place for the event and the worldwide broadcast handled by the BBC.

With the stage on a revolving system, to account for the quick band changeovers, audio was set up with an A/B of splits, front of house and monitor systems and trucks. Two DiGiCo D5 Live boards sat at the front of house position with engineers Chris Coxhead and Chris Morrison at the A and B consoles respectively. Mike ‘Bunny’ Warren operated the show/presenter console. In addition DiGiCo’s Tim Shaxson sat at a further, offline, D5 that was used by guest engineers to check settings.

“Our main role was to help the visiting band engineers to set up, or modify, existing D5 session files which would work with the system at Wembley,” explains Coxhead. “And if there was no FOH engineer, then we would mix that band.”

The one exception was Metallica’s FOH engineer, Big Mick Hughes, who mixed their set on a Midas XL8, which had been brought in preparation for Metallica’s show at the venue the next day. All the consoles were fed into a DiGiCo D1, the routing board for the PA system.

Meanwhile at Monitor Beach, DiGiCo’s Roger Wood had the task of prepping the sessions for the two D5s on duty there, assisted by Britannia Row’s Jon Lewis, Ben Phillips and Graham Blake.

Audio systems engineers for the event were Sherif el Barbari, Nico Royan and Davide Lombardi, who set up a flown Electro-Voice X-Line PA system combined with Outline Butterfly fills and delays to work in conjunction with the house PA, which was utilised on the stadium’s upper tiers. The Outline system comprised 70 Outline Butterfly Hi-packs and twenty Subtech 218 subwoofers, all powered by Outline T Series amps.

“Everything came down to the D1,” explains el Barbari. “All of the band mixes came to the D1. From there I sent them to the Dolby Lake matrix system and on to an Iris system, which gave me total control.”

The D1 delivered 24 feeds via the Dolby Lake Processors – three as 8x8 Mesa Quad Equalizers and one as a 4x12 zone controller – to the house PA speaker arrays, subwoofers, fills and delays. “Using the digital trim facility I could match the digital and analog levels, so a fallback to analog, in case of digital signal loss, would be seamless, not audible at all.”

Bryan Grant, MD, Britannia Row Productions, noted that the use of the Dolby Lake Processors was particularly critical for Spinal Tap, who reformed especially for the Live Earth show:

“Naturally we were concerned with the legendary Spinal Tap’s misgivings about doing heavy metal with Dobly, but based on our positive experiences with the technology to date, we decided to give it a try. The rest is history, as they say: the Tap’s sound was awesome as always, and even the drummer remained intact. It gave us the confidence to use them on Metallica’s hugely successful Wembley show on the same system the day afterwards.”

Joking aside, the smooth running of such a high profile show is a testament to staff involved: “As you can see, we used a number of tools to get the job done and the DiGiCo consoles were at the heart of the system,” concludes Grant. “Our engineers worked closely with the DiGiCo team to prepare for the event and consequently it all went very smoothly. We even finished a couple of minutes ahead of time, which, given the complexity of the program was a fantastic achievement by the whole production and audio crew utilised throughout the event.”

GERMANY CALLING
EV and Midas take the strain for the Hamburg show

The HSH-Nordbank Arena provided the venue for the German Live Earth event, with Satis&Fy enlisted to handle the sound reinforcement.

Here, the FOH and monitor positions were occupied by a total of four Midas Heritage 3000 and two Heritage 2000 consoles, while Electro-Voice line arrays (X-Line and XLC) powered by Tour Grade TG-7 amps with RCM-26 Remote Control Modules acted as the main PA.

In addition, an EV N8000 NetMax system handled the signal distribution for routing, matrix, delays and master EQs. The system team was led by FOH manager Bernd Buthe and monitor engineer Horst Hartmann.

While not taking the digital route as chosen in London, the very tight schedule and ten minute changeover times were again performed flawlessly. The three MIDAS Heritage FOH/Monitor desk combinations (an A/B/C system) operated as follows: thus while System A was playing, System B was in line check backstage, and System C setting up, and so on. As such, there were no sound checks, only line checks, and no guest consoles.

According to Jürgen Langhorst from EVI Audio (pictured, left), onsite to support the sound team, the high pressure show, which was marred by bad weather, was a qualified success, and he was delighted with the way things panned out, commenting: “Everyone in the crew – whether on stage or manning the consoles deserves the highest praise. They did an outstanding job throughout the entire nine-hour show.”

HHB FLASHMIC RECORDS INTERVIEWS FOR US RADIO

London-based outside broadcast specialists Wired For Sound used HHB FlashMic Digital Recording Microphones to record interviews with artists appearing at Live Earth.

Providing remote facilities for the US rights-holder Premiere Radio Networks, the Wired For Sound team issued FlashMics to four roving reporters who returned to the operations room throughout the day, where recordings were downloaded via USB, edited, and then transferred via ISDN or FTP to Premiere Radio Networks’ studios in New York. Content was then syndicated to several hundred radio stations across the US.

“The FlashMics made everything easy,” enthused Wired For Sound’s Johnnie Dymock. “We set them all to AGC (Automatic Gain Control) and locked everything down so all interviewers had to do was push record. They were weighed down with wireless talkback systems and walkie-talkies, so they really appreciated the compactness and simplicity of the FlashMics.”

When it came to transferring files, Dymock was equally impressed with the FlashMic’s performance. “With no removable media to worry about, all we had to do was plug into the FlashMic’s USB interface. All in all, the FlashMics did a great job - so much so that we’ll be adding them to our hire stock straight away.”

SENNHEISER GOES GLOBAL
There was little doubt about the brand behind Live Earth’s mic of choice

German microphone systems manufacturer Sennheiser utilised its newly established global relations team to provide an unprecedented level of support for artists who use the company’s products, and at the same time reaching out to both production and sound hire companies associated with the concerts with an offer of support.

In London, Sennheiser personnel were working alongside concert sound provider Britannia Row Productions to support artists such as Madonna, Foo Fighters, Pussycat Dolls, Keane, Black Eyed Peas, Bloc Party, Kasabian, Beastie Boys and Corinne Bailey Rae. Using systems in place from the previous week’s Concert for Diana, every wireless personal monitor used onstage by the 21 acts was a Sennheiser evolution wireless G2 system, and each of the presenters, which included Chris Rock, Ricky Gervais, Eddie Izzard and Rob Reiner, used a Sennheiser SKM 5200 wireless microphone.

Jason Kirschnick, Eighth Day Sound Systems, was responsible for Madonna’s Sennheiser wireless complement. Purchased last year for the Confessions world tour, the system was expanded to 24 channels for Live Earth London, so Kirschnick was thankful for the onsite support. “It is always a pleasure working with the Sennheiser crew. Mark Saunders, relations manager for Europe, the Middle East, Africa & India, and Dave Hawker, frequency coordinator and planner for Sennheiser UK make my job a bit easier.”

In addition, Foo Fighters’ monitor engineer Ian Beveridge reports that frontman Dave Grohl used a custom-chromed Sennheiser MD 431-II mic on the stage thrust and a second, black version on the main stage. A longtime fan of the MD 431-II Beveridge revealed that in London “I had no EQ on the wedge other than what comes with the processor, and no EQ on the channel other than a high-pass filter. It was tremendous, and I had a lot of compliments on the vocals.”

At Giants Stadium in New Jersey, sound was provided by Firehouse Productions where Kristy Jo Winkler, Sennheiser relations manager for the Americas and Canada, was working with The Police, Dave Matthews Band, Smashing Pumpkins and Akon. Firehouse’s Vinny Siniscal, RF coordinator, assembled a Sennheiser G2 wireless IEM system with 32 body-packs, and an A 5000 CP antenna. Siniscal managed roughly 150 channels of RF and reports, “two-thirds of the “in-ear” systems were G2 ears.

Hamburg was the venue where Sennheiser was most widely used – with around 80 radio links, both wireless microphones and wireless monitoring in use. 19 of the 23 artists used Sennheiser.

In Shanghai, China, Sennheiser and production company LAB provided a stage-wide complement of wired and wireless microphones plus wireless personal monitor systems. Here, a potential problem was the venue, which is adjacent to a television transmission tower. However, according Vince Tan, relations manager for Asia and Australia, this was bypassed with the frequency agility of the Sennheiser RF equipment.

“The RF spectrum was full when the receivers were set up. However, we managed to circumvent this situation and had our wireless working like a breeze.”

Other Sennheiser equipment was in use in Japan, Australia, Brazil and South Africa, where Joss Stone used a Sennheiser wireless handheld mic with a Neumann capsule.