Meyer Sound Launches Daily Online Training Program

The content blocks will offer a natural progression of subject matter, providing attendees both practical knowledge for honing skills as well case studies for reference. The instructors will review specialty tools that cover a diverse set of solutions across all industry verticals.
The education team also welcomes attendees to choose from an à la carte menu to create every other Friday “On Demand” programming via a weekly poll through the Meyer Sound Users Community Facebook group.
Later in the spring, special guests, including Meyer Sound CEO John Meyer, will be invited to join and lead some of the discussions.

John Mac Mahon

“Education has always been a pillar of the holistic Meyer Sound core brand philosophy of sharing knowledge. Recent events have put the spotlight on the importance of offering our public training not just with in-person seminars but via online platforms,” says John McMahon, Meyer Sound Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “Our global team was quick to respond to the need by curating an informative and engaging program.”

The webinars are organized by weekly content chapters kicking off with the Meyer Sound Precision Toolset and introduction to MAPP XT, introduction to Compass control software and ULTRA Series, intermediate Compass and IntelligentDC technology, and advanced Compass and digital steerable CAL column loudspeakers round out the first month.

The team will continue the established format of Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays in English led by Merlijn van Veen, Meyer Sound Senior Technical Support and Education Specialist. Tuesday and Thursday session will be in Spanish with the first session featuring Oscar Barrientos, Meyer Sound Technical Services Manager, Latin America.

Merlijn van Veen

Oscar Barrientos


For easy access to these popular course offerings, simply click on the Zoom link to join the English sessions at the scheduled times

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Meyer Sound Mexico will host a Spanish language session at the same time. To join, simply click the Spanish-language Zoom link at the scheduled times

Sessions run approximately one hour, are free and no registration required. Upcoming training sessions are listed in the Meyer Sound events calendar.

The webinars are recorded and archived on YouTube

Vantablack Monolith on stage with Gesaffelstein Brought to Life by GLP

French ‘prince of darkness’ was a 2019 Coachella sensation and was followed by a major tour. After a breathtaking stage set at Coachella last April, French record producer and DJ Gesaffelstein created a blueprint for the huge Against the Night, Across the Time US tour that was to follow towards the end of the year.

La scénographie de Gesaffelstein à Coachella à tracé la route de la tournée américaine. @Pierre Claude

Installed behind the artist was a 32ft high monolith covered entirely in Vantablack, a fragile material known to deliver the world’s blackest black, erasing any visible features on a 3D surface and making objects very disorienting for the brain. The UK-designed material was present for the first time in a live performance context.

Show producer, Matthias Leullier, from Live Nation France, collaborate alongside LD Pierre Claude to turn the concept into reality, the latter in turn dipping into his GLP toolbox.
He specified 54 x JDC1, hybrid strobes as the main fixtures (running them mostly in SPix Pro Mode4, using 62 DMX channels). Two lines of 12 JDC1 on the floor surrounded the artist, with a 24 JDC1 tower behind the Vantablack, and a further six hybrid strobes on a truss. Meanwhile on the floor were 12 GLP impression X4 Bar 20s run in full pixel mode.

Leullier said, “The main idea behind Gesaffelstein’s set was to create a memorable experience with a super-black monolith able to challenge the audience’s depth and spatial perception. The artist appears to ‘float’ against the Vantablack monolith, a mesmerizing two-dimensional black void.

© Frazer Harrison

During the performance, this also separates into two vertical halves exposing a high-resolution LED display combined with a complex light show including heavy strobes, the contrast of all the bright lights and the super dark material creating an extremely intense visual experience for spectators.” And it is GLP’s unique JDC1 which delivered this heavy strobing for the EDM artist who is colloquially known as ‘the prince of darkness’.

Pierre Claude first started designing light for Gesaffelstein back in 2013 when part of the Parisian agency Franz & Fritz, who had been touring with the artist for some time. “I was very glad that he called me back me at the end of 2018 for the preparation of his new live show,” he stated. “His music and his universe are very dark.”

“White light is mainly used for his live shows,” Pierre explained, “and this makes it possible to bring out the black; the silences make it a very theatrical spectacle and it pushes the limits of my creativity to work without colour and use the Vantablack as the centrepiece for this tour.” Painting the Vantablack represented the longest and most complicated period of the design.
Pierre Claude admits that he reflected at length on how best to treat the lighting. “The idea was to highlight elements that absorbed everything, not to be lit directly. For an artist dressed and helmeted in black, the lighting needed to be theatrical and intense… a nightmare because in normal productions the set design is an added value, whereas here, the challenge was to make it disappear.”
After the success of Coachella, making the rig ‘tourable’ became the most challenging part of the project. It was conceived in four layers: two Vantablack Monolith sections 32 ft high on Kinesys motion control and two LED screen sections also on Kinesys; the other sections comprised a 32ft high LED Warm white screen, a GLP JDC1 tower comprising 24 of the hybrid strobes, with a massive floor package and DJ booth on a rolling riser containing lighting.

Système Motion Control Kinesys du monolithe.

For the tour a further mid-stage lighting truss was included in front of the Monolith, working with PRG Projects. In terms of scalability, they retained the same width to guarantee the set movements but with variable height (since it is divisible in 4ft sections).
Harking back to the 2013 tour Pierre Claude wanted to retain the emblematic beams. “But I also wanted to add something extreme which emphasised the width but also the immense height of the set and which would be used as back light.”

For the floor and the tower the JDC1 was an obvious selection, he said. “I needed a machine that could tilt, but at the same time form a single huge linear strobe by placing the individual units next to each other.
“The show is very minimalist, and I am careful not to use different fixtures at the same time. The JDC1 doubles the capacities of a conventional strobe, effectively with two machines in one … giving 1152 pixels in all! It was definitely the ideal product to use as the strobe tower revealed the immensity of the monolith and gave the impression of a black hole.”

At first the lighting designer had been reluctant to use GLP’s impression X4 Bars in the design; he had just finished the tour of Phoenix, in which PRG Projects were also involved. The X4 Bar had been the main fixture in this set and he admits he was looking to change.
“But it has clearly become my favourite fixture and so I returned to this solution. It helped to mitigate places that were too dark when the monolith was open, and helped to bring a different aspect of the design.

Les JDC1 au sol à contre forment une ligne de strobes puissante.

“The idea of moving the set with Kinesys [motion control] is untypical for EDM-type shows; we wanted to offer different looks but 75% of the movements are not visible during the black cues—the idea was to confuse the minds of the audience by revealing a different look when the light returned.
“As for the video, we had LED screens but no visuals as such, just gradients or solid colours. The X4 Bars were the perfect products to reveal the few visible movements and I used them in 88-channel mode to allow individual pixel mapping.”
In summary he said: “Obviously the JDC1 and X4 Bars have now become my standard; their reliability is incredible, and after using 66 machines over 20 shows we didn’t once need to call on a spare.”

Paying tribute to the artist’s manager, Manu Barron, producer Matthias Leullier, tour director Lara Scheidt, lighting assistant Vincent Leroy, and crew, Stephen Rose and Conner Ostrowski, Pierre Claude confirms that the conclusion of the tour certainly hasn’t marked the end of the road for this set design. Several headline spots at festivals in the US next summer have already been announced along with a single date in France next October at the AccorHotels Arena.

“We are already working on this show and we will be introducing a lot of additional JDC1 for this show,” Pierre promises.

More information on GLP Fixtures

L-Acoustics New White Papers and Access to his Library

L-Acoustics offers freely available education initiatives, including three new White Papers, AES scientific articles and daily webinars on his website, and help maintain connection with partners and users.

In line with its ongoing commitment to scientific research and the advancement of the audio industry, L-Acoustics today announced the release of three new White Papers: Measurement Quality at Low Frequencies, Measurement Quality at High Frequencies and Optimum Measurement Locations for Loudspeaker System Equalization, all available for download on the L-Acoustics website.

Etienne Corteel

“Our White Papers have been conceived in a condensed format, and are published on our website and social media channels, in order to reach the widest possible audience,” says Etienne Corteel, Director of Education & Scientific Outreach at L-Acoustics.
“They are formatted to present our rigorous scientific research in a user-friendly way, and represent our commitment to the wide acceptance of science-based sound design principles.”

At the same time, L-Acoustics has made its entire catalogue of AES scientific articles available for download free of charge for the first time. This includes recent subjects such as Optimum Measurement Locations for Large-Scale Loudspeaker System Tuning Based on First-Order Reflections Analysis and On the Efficiency of Flown vs. Ground Stacked Subwoofer Configurations, through to its landmark AES article, Wavefront Sculpture Technolgy.

L-Acoustics has a long and consistent track record of educational outreach. Last year, its teams conducted 700 days of training, 200 of which were completed at recently established L-Acoustics Authorized Training Centers in partnership with key Certified Providers. Six thousand certificates were granted to more than 2,000 trainees via these programs, which took place in 60 countries around the globe.

This commitment to educational outreach was immediately adapted to the current situation when, on March 17, L-Acoustics Application, Education, Marketing and Commuincations teams worked together to create a program of daily online webinars, aimed to help industry members update and sharpen skills on L-Acoustics products and tools.

Hosted at 5pm Paris time / 8am Los Angeles time every weekday, the webinars cover categories like Education, but also Application Case Studies, Product & Technology Outreach and Conversation with the Pros, featuring guest speakers. The calendar of upcoming webinars can be found on the L-Acoustics website and all completed sessions are made available on YouTube to watch at leisure.

“As with our traditional training, the webinars are conducted by expert professionals, selected for their skills and experience in the audio industry. This will allow our users to utilize this time of forced hiatus to expand their knowledge on the L-Acoustics workflow,” adds Corteel. “Until we can again offer our traditional training and L-Acoustics accreditation programs, we wanted to allow L-Acoustics users worldwide to have access to a free online resource.”

The White Papers and all existing AES publications are accessible from the L-Acoustics white paper

Check the webinar calendar at L-Acoustics Upcoming Events

Past sessions can be found on youtube with the link here

Proteus meets Hercules in New York’s Central Park

Tony-award winning LD Tyler Micoleau casts versatile IP65 moving head for multiple roles in open-air Public Theater production. At the end of its regular season of Shakespeare in the Park, New York’s Public Theater stages an open-air production at Central Park’s 1,800-seat open-air Delacorte Theater.
This past season, the glorious story of Hercules was presented, a theatrical pageant brought to life by some 200 performers with an enchanting lighting design by Tony-award winning lighting designer Tyler Micoleau. The designer turned to Elation Professional’s multi-use Proteus Hybrid™ luminaire to provide visual impact in the outdoor environment.

Micoleau had worked on two Shakespeare shows in Central Park earlier in the summer, but it was a very different plot he knew he needed for Hercules. “The musical Hercules, in a theater as large as the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, required (pun intended) very muscular lighting approaches,” he comments.

“The Elation Proteus Hybrid provided just that muscle. In 2-degree beam mode, the Proteus fixtures gave me the powerful concentrated beams I needed to create beam architecture above the stage and the five 28-foot Grecian columns of the set. We were bouncing light off of the clouds passing by; it was crazy. We joked that we needed to alert air-traffic control to warn passing helicopters and small planes.”

Alex Brandt, lighting supervisor at The Public, worked with Micoleau on what gear to use on the production. He states, “Because it’s The Public Works show and it’s such a short run, we don’t have a huge budget to add in new fixtures.
Set Designer Dane Laffrey had produced renderings that included finger-like air effect elements from upstage that Director Lear deBessonet liked the look of.
We wanted to make that happen but none of the equipment we had in the Park could accomplish that as we didn’t have weatherproof gear and really didn’t want to put fixtures in bubbles, which is an eye sore. Tyler and I knew that we needed to find a bright instrument that was IP65 rated with enough of a zoom to really get those columns of light coming up from behind the stage.”

Consequently, Micoleau and Brandt demoed the Proteus Hybrid one mid-summer night in Central Park after one of the Shakespeare productions. “I spoke with John Dunn [Elation National Sales Manager] about what we could try out to have more IP-rated fixtures for this coming summer, so it was a good opportunity to try the Proteus out,” Brandt said. “We looked at it against a bunch of different units from various companies and liked what we saw.”

Micoleau chose the Proteus and placed seven of the IP65 arc-source units atop a goalpost for light architecture above and behind the Delacorte stage.
Used throughout the show, the multi-functional beam / spot / wash units with 23,000 lumens of power and zoomable in all modes fulfilled several roles beam and air effects from upstage, character highlights (costume design by Andrea Hood,) and backlight wash when actors entered the stage from upstage stairs. The Proteus fixtures were supplied through Christie Lites, who served as The Public’s intelligent lighting vendor for the summer.

Conceived over 60 years ago as one of the nation’s first nonprofit theaters, The Public show each summer at the Delacorte Theater includes a handful of equity actors who perform alongside amateurs from different community groups, a deliberate blurring of the line between professional artists and community members.
The enthusiastic, feel-good Hercules received rave reviews and the Delacorte Theater was packed during its August 31 to September 8 run. Assistant lighting supervisor Michael Bateman served as production electrician on the show.

More on the Elation website

 

The RCF Audio Academy Online is up and teaching

Topics covered include Sound System Design courses for line array systems, subwoofer alignment and tuning, design of controlled directivity systems in difficult environments, design of EN54 voice alarm systems, and many others. Viewers and students will also have the opportunity to ask questions via a chat window during each live stream.

Seats for these webinars are filled on a first-come, first-serve basis. Once the seat limit is reached, attendees will see a message that the classroom is full. Attendees who are unable to attend can then subscribe to the next session available.

Lucio Boiardi Serri

These webinars are already part of our Audio Academy educational program. RCF has renewed the program to guarantee the best possible service to customers during this unique moment in our history.
“In addition to the webinars, which are open to all, we also provide customer support in the digital world. We will also publish numerous tutorials on RCF products in addition to the many already available with guidelines, usage tips, and tricks of the trade”, says Lucio Boiardi Serri, coordinator of the Pro-Live section of Audio Academy.

“Electroacoustics is a complex topic that needs to be studied thoroughly before applying to the field. The mission of the RCF Audio Academy is to improve the technical ability of our customers and provide training to use our products in the most optimal way. A time period like this is an opportunity to be seized.”

The list of courses is available with the link here

More info on the RCF website

MSI Japan and Bun Hote unites Barbee Boys with MLA

Barbee Boys are a Japanese rock band and the first Japanese group to perform at the Nippon Budokan. They announced a solo ‘comeback’ concert at the Yoyogi National Stadium 1st Gymnasium, exactly a decade after that Budokan show, whith MSI and Martin MLA.

The Yoyogi National Stadium 1st Gymnasium.

MSI Japan had the honour of being asked to provide the sound production and Bun Hote, who has been supporting artistes from the Office Augasta stable (which includes Kyoko, a member of the Barbee Boys), was charged with mixing the sound.
Respected for his ability as a system tech as well as a FOH engineer, he chose Martin Audio’s award-winning MLA as his favoured PA. His solution was to adopt a unique approach to his system design, to achieve consistency throughout the challenging arena and unite the entire audience.

Bun Hote’s Martin MLA design.

On each side of the stage, three arrays were hung from a single H-shaped truss tower, all facing in different directions. The main array consisted of 13 MLA cabinets and a single MLD downfill cabinet. The side array was pointing 45 degrees outside of the main array and comprised nine MLA and an MLD.
Another array was aiming 90 degrees outside of the main array and consisted of five MLA and two MLD downfill boxes. A further array of six MLX subwoofers (with a pair facing backwards to create cardioid directivity) was hung from the same tower.

Bun Hote described his design philosophy: “First of all, we had little time for set-up, starting at midnight when the load-out of the last show had finished. The H-shaped tower was reused from the previous show, just changing the location of the motor. In Yoyogi National 1st Gymnasium, it is necessary to build stand-alone towers from the ground, as the roof weight is strictly regulated. After considering those factors, this location plan seemed to be the best.”

In Yoyogi National 1st Gymnasium, with the usage of the end-stage, there is a wall at the far side consisting of main arrays rather than audience seating, he explained. “Instead there were more audience seats in the direction that the side arrays would be pointing.
With so many people expected, the production teams decided they would keep the audience area also for the side of the stage. However, we were unable to shift the side arrays too much as this would contribute to the wide area of the seating where the main arrays could not aim, avoiding reflection from the back wall. As a result, we needed one more array to cover the area just beside the stage.”

The 12 MLX subs, 8 facing the audience and 4 flipped backwards.

There is an additional line of subwoofers stacked in front of the stage, besides the rigged subwoofers. Eight MLX subwoofers were aligned horizontally, while the four MLXs were stacked separately onto the subwoofer line, aiming behind in a cardioid broadside subwoofer array arc.
As for MLA he cited its superior sound and “amazing” long throw capability. “I couldn’t have achieved this show without MLA. MLA will have unlimited capability when you plan it correctly and with our increased knowledge, experience and new approach to system design we have achieved a much more flexible result, meeting the demands of the client, the variety of music and artists’ considerations.”

More on Martin Audio website

Vincent Vinnie Perreux

We met Vinnie in the aisles of an exhibition, on the Audio Concept’s stand, the company representing Clair Bros in France. Having Vinnie on the stand inevitably attracts customers, delighted to exchange a few words in a perfect French, while Dominique Maurel relishes. True customer-oriented service, as we like.

We took advantage of a pause in the customer flow, to meet Vinnie separately, and to discover some of it facets.

SLU : You look like being at home here

Vinnie : I am. I quickly feel good everywhere. This might explain why I leave fast as well (smile)!
I don’t have any ties.

SLU : Your French accent is built of a thousand nuances; I can’t tell where you come from.

Vinnie : I’m Druze. I was born and raised in the mountains facing Beyrouth, Lebanon. I don’t know my parents; I was adopted by a French family. I was at the Saint-Vincent de Paul sisters Christian’s orphanage and my adoptive mother, who was a nurse at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital, knew one of the sisters. My name is Vincent Perreux but I could also be named Mohamed Dupont. I did my first trip when I was very young, and traveling has never been a handicap in my life.

Dominique Maurel and Vinnie on the Audio Concept’s stand.

SLU : How old are you?

Vinnie : I’m 53.

SLU : Were these so different roots a weight when you were a kid?

Vinnie : A bit. Kids go the hard way: “Why are you different? What does your daddy do? Where are you born….”. When I answered I was Lebanese at the time when the French peacekeepers were being shot, I became a kind of pet peeve, somewhere responsible for this war.

Sound is music

SLU : How did you enter the audio world?

Vinnie : Music is the foundation. My dad wanted me to become a soldier. It didn’t work, neither did a mechanic or a cook. I gave up with the last sector as I was too rebellious, and when I was yelled at, I answered. But still the passion for stove last. At the same time, I played in a band called the Rocking Kronenbourg, and as expected we went to play in the street of London.

Ex Rocking Kronenbourg’s drummer in great shape.

SLU : Instrument?

Vinnie : Drums. Very bad. Training in Stray Cats style as it was very simple for me in terms of gear. Long story short, we kept the second part of our band’s name, Kronenbourg, and we drank a lot of shots. Still, we managed to earn a bit of money and we hold out until that man popped up and said he will make you record a demo tape in a studio… Gloomy, but hey, a recording studio!

There we realized how bad and out of sync we were playing. I remember at one point getting up from my seat and going into the studio cabin. “What are you doing with your buttons?” I was fascinated. I came back to the other side of the window and told the musicians, “I’m about to stop playing guys, I want to do this. And this was the last day I play drums, a small step for me and a big step for music (laughs). This was back in 1985.

SLU : And after the click?

Vinnie : Vinnie: After the Kro period, I returned to France and since my parents lived in the center region, I followed a training in Bourges called, I believe, “Sound recording and stage technique. » We were interns at a venue called Germinal (memories here) and we became interns for the Printemps de Bourges festival as well! So I’m a little guy from Bourges who was loading out flight cases for the Régiscène company.

We couldn’t miss the trucks of Régiscène. For the nostalgic, more info and pictures here: www.regiscene.fr

A little bit of Rock, but a lot of work

Vinnie : Still in Bourges, I then started as a sound manager at the Jacques Cœur theater, and I worked on jazz festivals, theatrical pieces, ballets and we were awarded several times. Artistically speaking, it was a very intense era, but despite all of this, it lacked rock’n’roll ! (laughs). No matter how often I parked my Harley in front of the theater, they played jazz most of the time!

SLU : Already owned a Harley?

Vinnie : No, you’re right, it was a Norton Commando. At that time, I was driving English motorbikes. From the theater, I moved to Paris, like many other people and, I don’t know why, I went to Italy for a dance festival in Forlì. I had acquired some skill in multichannel audio and that probably helped me. I also met my first Italian fiancée there and I settled in her country. Bye-bye Bourges.

Ivano Fossati in session at Maison Blanche. The hardware was probably good, but what about the acoustic of the living room, sorry the studio cabin…

I started working with some great recording studios like Maison Blanche in Modena (a very large part of the big Italian hits including dance music were recorded there, Ed.).
As these studios made live recordings as well, and from time to time sound reinforcement, I was offered to discover the busy Italian music market with people like Zucchero.
This is how I set off on Eros Ramazzotti’s first world tour as a P.A management assistant. Eros wanted to continue collaborating with his studio engineer, and the latter offered me to follow him on this tour. To be honest with you, we both were not that skilled, but we learned. The Italian production company collaborated with Brit Row and we were using a Turbosound system.

SLU : Heavy stuff?

Vinnie : We toured more than a year, and the concerts in Italy can be very, very big (smiles). The tour goes on and I end up being the monitor guy. We’re going to the USA and we’re making a date at the Hilton Midtown’s ballroom in New York. I am on stage left with the brand-new Heritage 3000 Midas has just sent us and on the front of house we have one XL4. The PA is based on Clair Brothers. It is the first time I see it and yet I say to myself: “I want to work with them …”

The S4, the dream of an era. “The firepower of a battleship and guns of competition” like French actor Blier would state.

SLU : Why, did you know the company?

Vinnie : I knew the name obviously. All audio professionals know the Clair brand. At that time, Italy was historically turned towards the US and the example to follow was Clair Bros. Milano based production company Music Service had copies of S4 and used it for Vasco Rossi.
In Italy everyone made copies because Clair was THE brand. These copies were blue but did not sound exactly like the real ones (laughs).

SLU : What about the encounter?

Vinnie : It happened. And I told them how excited I was to join the company. Problem, I had met a freelance who probably saw with a bad eye that an Italian puts his foot in the company, so at the end he told me: “well, you just have to call them!”

SLU : People took you for an Italian?

Vinnie : Necessarily. I spoke Italian with Eros and my chameleon side has always worked in my favor. I adapt ! So, at the end of the tour I try to call the US twice, nothing… I was then told to contact Audio Rent, which had just gone under the Clear flag, with no further effect. Starts the tour of another big Italian artist, Renato Zero. We left with V-Dosc because Paul Bauman and I had trained the Agora’s teams, the production company of this tour.

A phone call and everything is Clair!

« All along your career you meet people who make you proud to do the job you have been doing for all these years. A huge thank you to Mr. David W. Scheirman, ex-AES president. »

SLU : So, you tour with Renato Zero…

Vinnie : And there, phone call. A Swiss number: “Hello Mr. Perreux, Audio Rent speaking. We got your contact through the US. We need someone to set up Carlos Santana’s system …”.
I take a deep breath (laughs) and I ask how long they need me:” Ahh it’s a short one, 2 weeks maximum.” Problem: I have a 4-month contract, and it looks like it will last with Agora. The classic dilemma.

“You are paid so much and given an hour to think. ” The American way! Obviously, I said yes, I left everything and ended up… in southern Italy (laughs) where Santana played with Joe Satriani as the opening act.

« This picture represents my life on the road since I’m 20. »

SLU : For those who don’t like guitars…

Vinnie : A nightmare! 5 hours non-stop with the sound check. But from there I went on 22 years of non-stop tours.

SLU : Without doing your classes?

Vinnie : Ahh, of course I did! When I got there, they said to me, “You forget everything you know. This is a camlock, and your job is to pull electrical cables, period!
I started like this. No wonder, since today Clair has a school that trains young people in a two years program. It became a university program in the USA. 30 years ago, they already had the same mindset.

“In the essential series, Big Mick! I don’t remember if it was in South America or Asia, but it was Metallica for sure! “

SLU : But you had a break there?

Vinnie : Yes, when I stopped touring, I worked for Harman. I settled in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia and I became Mister JBL. Then I returned to Italy where I took care of the Outline brand for two years.

SLU : No comment?

Vinnie : On this last experience, no. When Clair knew that I had stopped with this Italian brand in 2019, they came back to me and offered me to collaborate with them again, but this time it was for the sales branch called Clair Bros and for Clair Global, the audio production company.

SLU : And you settled at home in Toscany?

Vinnie : I live, and I have my office there. That said, I radiate all over Europe or even beyond if necessary. A very flexible Europe which can go as far as Dubai or Orlando (laughs). I had already started a kind of retraining, as since in the middle of touring for Global, I was asked to open Clair Bros Indonesia by training the staff who are still in place today. I stayed there for more than 6 months.

SLU : Keeping your style?

Vinnie : Sure, tie and white shirt are not an option for me! I come from the touring world, where this is not common!

« Let me introduce you to the best team in the world. U2 360° World Tour in 2009. »

SLU : You stopped touring as an Audio Crew Chief, I can imagine it took some steps from cable man to audio manager?

Vinnie : Absolutely, like everyone! At the end at Clair, I was FOH and team manager, but mostly I took care of the mixers, and major audio engineers like Joe O’Herlihy, Jon Lemon or Pooch Van Druten. I took care of their FOH and I calibrated their system according to the needs of each.

“How can I not speak about Mr. Pooch for whom I have been an assistant, collaborator, system manager and obviously a friend since Clair Global took over Showco. “

Joe lets you do it and listens to the result, where Pooch works with you step by step. I loved the “Perfect, I want this every day” challenge, which is far from obvious. I think I left a good memory even if a lot of people will tell you I’m a doucheface….

SLU : Effectiveness first?

Vinnie : I had a job to do, and it was done no matter what. You must be the first to get up in the morning and the last to close the truck’s doors. In any case, and view the size of certain tours, I’m thinking of U2 especially, there was no place for the slightest error.
There were so many of us, that we were several team leaders, each taking care of its own business. My job is to give you the turnkey Ferrari with a full tank and stay by your side if something goes wrong because I know the smallest details of the installation. I love it!

“My mentor, my gourou, my friend, my confident, my Irish dad. Joe O’Herlihy with whom I’ve been around the world for U2, REM, The Cranberries…”

SLU : 53 years old. How do you see yourself continuing and evolving?

Vinnie : I perfectly see myself continuing as technical support and I think it would be interesting to have a Clair Bros structure, a kind of dry rental which would be working in partnership with all Clair Europe services. To be in the middle and to offer support, complete a tour kit where it is necessary.

“Such an essential picture for me. Right, Jo Ravitch, one of Clair Global’s longest serving team leaders who taught me everything I know about systems and who always trusted me. At the center, Joel “Lunch Box” Merrill who made his first World Tour on U2-360 ° and is now responsible for Clair Global systems’ biggest tours… Three generations of Audio Tech.”

SLU : But isn’t it what AudioRent is meant for?

Vinnie : No, Audio Rent is Clair Global (ahh this segmentation… Ed.) but it is important that those who use Clair Bros systems have the same type of support as those who use the Clair Globals’ services. For this reason, you need someone who comes from the Clair Global world who make sure that a Clair Bros tour is done the Clair Global’s way.
As a matter of fact, Clair Global’s teams are already backing up on Clair Bros’ tours, this happens for instance with equipment purchased by some groups. As an example, the power of Clair is Josh Sadd’s ability to design tailored speakers for tours but also for boats, churches or restaurants and make them invisible, but at the same time very good sounding.

“What a sadness … For the Cranberries I was stage manager assistant, system manager, team manager, up to monitor guy. Dolores O’Riordan was a superb person, a great artist and above all a friend. I miss you… “

SLU : When we listen to you, we think of Xavier Gendron and others who had this desire as well, let’s even call this a passion for Clair. Where do you think it comes from?

Vinnie : I think the French market is not enough for them. Some French artists obviously make you travel but they are as rare as the number of dates abroad. It is not easy to always deal with the same thing every day and for that aspect, Clair is perfect.
Take Xav, I saw him as an assistant on big Clair’s tours when he was a great sound engineer, but he understood that to reach some artist, you need to analyze how the Americans work and gain your place step by step. He got there and he fully deserves it.

SLU : Do you miss the Rock&Roll lifestyle?

Vinnie : Yes, but you need to know how to ease off. I found myself in Lagos managing audio with maybe 500,000 people, in the presence of the Prime Minister. We are professionals, but this kind of event stresses a little, still.

“In the foreground Marc Carolan and his assistant Andy O’Brien behind him. A massive audio engineer with whom I worked on different U2 tours where he came with the group in the first part, until the day we went on tour for Muse together! Two more points for Ireland! “

It’s nice to leave Greenland to go to the Moon then have lunch in Tokyo and have an aperitif in Paris in the evening, but day after day, it’s harder to recover even the jet lag. My body told me to stop in its own way and you must listen to it.

The memories jostle in my head, but the thrill and the mercenary side where nothing is impossible will always be there. I was interviewed one day and when I was asked what I’m missing, I replied: “I hope to live long enough to do the first Clair’s concert on the moon!”


« “Last but not least, a lonely man can be brave and go for it much harder, there is always an even stronger woman behind. My wife, my friend, my counselor, my right arm, my chamomile… Eleonora! “»

SLU : Let’s leave the technique and by way of conclusion, a more personal question. Do you have children?

Vinnie : I have one, but to echo my story, I adopted him. I paid my due somehow. While I was living in Paris, I met a woman and she had a 4-and-a-half-year-old child. We lived together until he turned 18. I raised him up and he calls me dad.
I arrived in Paris a few days ago and the first person I wanted to see was him. He is 24 years old and works in insurance. He is adorable with a huge heart and he is a real Frenchman. He moans all the time against everyone (laughs)!

L-ISA on Bon Iver Tour

Firehouse Productions deployed an L-Acoustics PA for Justin Vernon and company’s latest North American trek, which added L-ISA Hyperreal Sound technology for its second leg, giving fans a super-wide sonic panorama experience.
Bon Iver’s fourth and most recent studio album, i,i, showed up on numerous music critics’ “best of” lists at the end of 2019, widely praised for its mélange of acoustic instrumentation, otherworldly electronic and experimental elements, and, of course, front man Justin Vernon’s inimitable voice.

An L-ISA rig helped by K2 to expand outfill coverage to 180° of seating in Minneapolis (photo credit: Graham Tolbert)

To be expected, Bon Iver supported the release with a tour of arenas in select North American cities, with Red Hook, New York-based Firehouse Productions supplying an L-Acoustics K2 and Kara PA for the trek. But the second and latest leg of the tour was even more special and spatial thanks to Firehouse’s deployment of L-ISA Hyperreal Sound technology.
According to Firehouse Productions Account Rep Chris Russo, the tour’s L-ISA configuration featured three central arrays each composed of 16 K2 plus three Kara down, flanked to the left and right by hangs of 24 Kara as the Scene system, which extended over the full width of the stage. Farther out to the left and right, two per side, 12-enclosure Kara arrays served as the Extension system, while two fill arrays of 12 K2 expanded outfill coverage to 180° of seating.

Two hangs of 10 KS28 each were flown in close proximity to the center K2 arrays providing homogeneous LF coverage, while three ARCS II per side down below were used for nearfield outfills and six Kara lined across the stage delivered frontfill. Fifty-two LA12X amplified controllers powered the entire system, and four new Milan-certified P1 AVB processors plus a pair of L-ISA Processors rounded out the L-Acoustics system complement.

Ben Iver Tour hits Chicago with L-ISA technology (photo credit: Graham Tolbert).

Although Bon Iver FOH Engineer Xandy Whitesel had mixed using L-ISA technology for a select “one-off” show with the band at the Santa Barbara Bowl a couple of years ago, this was his first opportunity to tour with the setup. “Andrew Gilchrest, our system tech, and I found that the mix image and tonality represented at FOH was very consistent and natural-sounding throughout each venue with L-ISA,” he shares.
“Even the far ‘nosebleed’ seats of the arenas sounded fantastic, as did the extreme left and right sides of the main floor where the L-ISA coverage very transparently transitioned over to the outfill coverage. There was no low/mid ‘wonk’ from seat-to-seat—it was all very clean and consistent—and there was also a noticeable attenuation of low end bleeding back onto the stage, which allowed the band to enjoy more precise in-ear mixes.”

Drawing on material from Bon Iver’s full catalog, the two-hour nightly show was performed by six musicians—two drummers/percussionists and four multi-instrumentalists/vocalists—generating 95 inputs from the stage, not including guests, talk mics and local channels. All musicians were on hard-wired IEMs, eliminating the need for stage wedges. Front-of-house and monitor positions both featured DiGiCo Quantum 7 consoles, and Whitesel’s desk fed the L-ISA Processor via direct outs from each channel.

The Boston L-ISA Bon Iver show (photo credit: James Dean).

Whitesel points out that his approach was to avoid “glitz,” at least from a sound reinforcement perspective, so he made judicious use of the L-ISA technology’s vast potential. “The band’s music is generally complex enough, so there’s no need to add fanciness to make it interesting,” he says.
“We did use some dynamic movement of elements in a couple of the songs that really invited it, but our goal for L-ISA was to enable a quality and consistent immersive experience for the audience to more fully engage with the music not to be distracted by the sound and we absolutely achieved that. It was very apparent that audiences were stoked and totally engaged.”

Firehouse’s Russo agrees: “The L-ISA technology definitely widens the ‘sweet spot’ typically only found at or around FOH and a thin slice up the center. Xandy did a great job using all of the technology’s resources. His mix was well balanced and dynamic, and the technology gave him a much wider canvas to paint on, which enhanced other show elements. L-ISA increased the resolution of Xandy’s already detailed mix, which deepened the audience’s connection with the band and their music, in turn making for an exceptional experience.”

Other information on L-Acoustics website

Waveworks. The Californian Dance Experience With Alcons

Based in Oakland, Brad founded Waveworks in 2016. “The dance music industry tends to stick with what it knows, and a lot of the competition is racing to be the loudest. I’ve spent my career searching for a true ‘3D’ sound that does not hurt after hours of dancing, where there is so little distortion that you can have a conversation and earplugs are optional,” he says.

Brad Katz with his system based on custom bass and subs and RR12 Alcons tops.

He first heard Alcons Audio pro-ribbon systems at a demonstration of the VR8 compact versatile monitor, before he founded Waveworks. “The demo was great, and it really stuck in my mind,” he says. “When I started the company I went to a lot of demos, to really prove to myself that Alcons pro-ribbon technology is amongst the best of the best out there. Every time I heard it, I was impressed.”

The Alcons RR12 topping 4 custom mid-bass subs aquipped with Faital Pro 15HP1030 woofers.

Brad invested in a system based on the Alcons RR12 point-source array module and Sentinel10 amplified loudspeaker controllers, which he deploys with his own custom single 15-inch Faital Pro horn loaded mid-bass Paraflex subs and the BassMaxx subs.
This ensures that, as a small production company breaking into a market with many established players, he brings something genuinely new and exciting.

“The RR12’s sound has incredible clarity and is so seamless – you can direct it very precisely and I’ve never heard another product that you literally can’t find the seam between two boxes unless you use your eyes,” he says. “But it’s not just our trained ears that hear it. It’s a whole new paradigm. I love watching the faces of people on the dancefloor experiencing such little distortion, asking what’s going on?”

The RR12 horizontal behaviour. As good as it gets thanks to its ribbon technology

It’s not just the exceptional sound quality and precise directivity of the pro-ribbon RR12 that Brad is so impressed with; logistically it ticks all the boxes. “They fly or ground-stack very easily; they literally just snap together and, with the asymmetric morphing lens on the ribbon, they sound right with little or no down tilt when they are ground-stacked,” he says.

“They are very loud for the size and weight; one person can rig or stack no problem and nothing else comes close to the detail at that level. I can scale up or down for all kinds of shows, use them as DJ monitors, front fill, mains, rear fill, etc. They are incredibly versatile.”
Alongside events, Waveworks also installs audio systems in upscale restaurants, nightclubs, places of worship and entertainment venues. You sense that Brad is really looking forward to the chance to install an RR12-based system, to give patrons the full pro-ribbon experience.
“Without a doubt, Alcons has knocked it out of the park with the RR12. It is a truly standout loudspeaker,” he says. “The fidelity makes it a pleasure to use each time. You feel all the music but can still have a comfortable conversation. Not only that, but I really like Alcons and its people. From the top down it is a very easy company to deal with.”

He concludes, “We worked at a small festival recently and the best comments came from the lighting crew. They were right in the firing line, in the middle at front of house, and they were stoked at not being blasted and having to wear earplugs for the whole show. That made my year!”

For more information, please visit the Wavework website and/or the Wavework Facebook and the Alcons Audio website

 

Ayrton Perseo adds pizazz to Pepsi Super Bowl LIV Halftime Show

As the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs battled it out for the NFL Championship, the Pepsi Super Bowl LIV Halftime Show brought a little Latin flavour to Miami’s 65,000-seat Hard Rock Stadium on Sunday 2 February 2020.
Thanks to an explosive show by Jennifer Lopez and Shakira, aided by Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny and Colombian star J. Balvin, and a cast of near 170 musicians, dancers, and performers.

This massive production, an eagerly awaited annual event, was broadcast live by Fox to 100 million viewers worldwide, all of whom witnessed a superb lighting show which had at its centre over 120 Ayrton Perseo IP65-rated multi-function profile fixtures.

The spectacular production was created by the legendary Super Bowl team headed by show designer, Bruce Rodgers of Tribe, Inc. and lighting designer, Bob Barnhart of 22 Degrees, alongside four lighting directors including Super Bowl veteran of 10 years, Jason Rudolf, Dave Grill, Pete Radice, and newcomer Patrick Brazil, who programmed and took responsibility for the Perseo fixtures.
“The show is a complete co-production involving all the team,” says Barnhart. “So, while Bruce is responsible for the layout and I the fixtures, ideas were bandied around early on and we quickly decided the Ayrton lighting rig would be the centrepiece of the whole design.”

Ayrton Perseo

Rodgers’ stage design included four runways of light upstage of the main stage, delineated by the same lighting fixtures that would also outline the circular main stage. Barnhart chose Perseo as that fixture to define the performance area, embedding 13 Perseo units in each runway to provide a dynamic backdrop to the show, and using the remainder around the main stage. He also installed 24 further Perseo fixtures on either side of the tunnels to light the teams as they made their pre kick-off entrances onto the field.

“The upstage ramps were the background of the show for us,” says Barnhart. “It’s very hard to get elevation in a set in the middle of a field with only 8-minutes set-up time, so we depended on those four long rows of lights to give us a really strong background.

One section of the upstage ramp containing 24 Perseo fixtures was capable of elevation, tilting 5ft into the air during Lopez’s song On The Floor. “This gave us a nice hard background for this number,” says Barnhart. “Shakira’s Empire was perhaps my favourite light cue in the show though. I loved how the Perseo light strobed so effectively it was the second song in the show and we were waiting to really roll them out in that number. It was great to have an LED fixture capable of genuine strobing instead of using its shutter, and it became an incredibly strong dynamic effect.”

Rodgers and Barnhart wanted to keep to the same fixture across the entirety of the stage for the sake of uniformity, and Perseo’s aesthetic played a major part in Barnhart’s choice. “Form factor is very important and Ayrton has chosen to pay a lot of attention to its aesthetic design. When choosing a fixture, it needs to look good as well as have all the bells and whistles, especially for TV. If it’s going to be on camera you want the inside and the outside to be as sexy and high tech as possible.

“Perseo is great to look at and, from a designer standpoint, I like that large aperture with its big glass face which you can use to create ‘hokum’ to fill in for camera shots – just glowing the face of it instead of producing a beam gave a nice look in the background.”

The successful fixture needed to be waterproof above all else “because Miami loves to rain as we know from previous Super Bowls there! We got lucky on the night as the weather was fine, but there were several downpours during programming in the parking lot and I can attest the Perseos are truly IP65-rated! We just let them run and they didn’t care at all. They were like dogs in a lake!”

But it is not just the IP rating that Barnhart found so attractive: “Perseo has many great features: the shutters were something I didn’t think I would need when I first picked the fixture, but as the show developed they became a really handy tool. I was able to side light the dancers during Waiting for Tonight for example, and shutter-cut off the spill on the floor and on Jennifer on the centre stage Dance Pole.

“The show gets very colourful at times and Perseo’s colour rendering is very good. Fox used new cameras running 2020 Vision – a new colour rendering system which increases the colour range the cameras can perceive. It was great to be able to see on camera all these colours that Perseo can produce – even though many broadcasters didn’t broadcast in 2020 Vision – but I can attest they were there! You’ll just have to take my word for it!”

Barnhart was also pleased with Perseo’s zoom capabilities which belie it compact size: “It’s a tough compromise – you want a fixture to be small, but physical size can limit the extent of your zoom ratio. But Perseo does really well on this front – it zooms out really well. It’s both a good close up fixture and pretty good distance fixture.”
In total, 124 Ayrton Perseo were supplied on a quick turnaround in a joint venture by JamPro Productions of Reno, NV, Mid-America Sound Corporation of Greenfield, IN, LEC of Chicago, IL and Harvest Productions of Kansas City, MO, all of which was faciliated by Aaron Hubbard at ACT Lighting, Ayrton’s exclusive distributor in the US.

“We’d like to thank these companies who were willing to pre-order the Perseos with shipment direct from the Ayrton factory in order to make the deadline,” says Hubbard. PRG’s Vice President of Television & Special Events, Tony Ward, and his team provided the transportation and onsite technical logistics for entire lighting system, including the Ayrton Perseo units.

“Aaron worked really hard to ensure we would be able to use Perseo and supported us at every step of the way,” says Barnhart. “There was a large quantity involved and a short deadline but he made sure they got delivered in time for the big event, ‘hot off the press as seen on TV!’ you might say.”
Crucially, Hubbard was instrumental in helping solve the crunch point that guaranteed Perseo’s place on the field. “I’m probably the only one in the world who cares about a lamp’s calibration time but it’s a vital element to us because of the extreme limits to our set up time in the interval,” explains Barnhart.
“We have precisely 8 minutes from the moment 500+ half-time crew exit the tunnels until we go live to over 100 million viewers, 5-6 minutes of which is taken up by the set build before we can make our cable connections. This leaves the last 120 seconds for the lights to receive power.

Perseo originally had a 2-minute calibration time which was just too long, especially when the opening cue made a big feature of them from the very first beat as they spring into life in animated waves behind Shakira. If they weren’t there, it would be very obvious.
So Aaron made a call to the Ayrton engineers, and within half an hour I had a call back telling me they could re-engineer the software to reduce the time to 70 seconds! So it was game on! It’s very nerve-wracking – I’m living dog-year lives when I’m doing a Super Bowl!”

“The other nice point that helped sell that fixture to me was its LED engine. It has an amazingly flat field with no hotspot (which can really stand out on camera), and there’s no strike problem with the lamp as can happen with a conventional source. With LED, once the power is on, it’s ready to go which takes away another whole layer of worry!

“I’ve become a fan of Perseo. I find I don’t need washlights anymore because good multipurpose units like Perseo do it all, and I heavily gravitate towards these kind of fixtures. Why alternate wash and profile fixtures in a rig if I can have multi-functional lights instead which give me more tools to work with.
“Ayrton has moved from creating unique effects lighting to truly functional workhorses. For a production like this you need a truly multi-purpose fixture with an LED source, shutters, iris, gobo options, a frost, prisms, ideally animation wheel plus they need to be quick and responsive and dependable all of which Perseo has. With a fixture like that you have a workhorse that you want to put through your entire rig!”

More on the Ayrton website

 

#LightTheSky for heroes fighting COVID-19

On Sunday, March 22nd, in an act of solidarity with all the heroes fighting the COVID-19 global pandemic, AV rental companies across the Benelux region, including on Curaçao in the Dutch Antilles, lit up the nighttime sky in an initiative called #LightTheSky.

Countless companies, venues and individuals took part Sunday evening from 20:00 to 20:30 by either pointing light beams skyward or illuminating architecture such as hospitals and parks. Reaction to the initiative was overwhelmingly positive as the events industry showed its support for all the medical staff and other front line service workers fighting to keep us all safe. As an industry hit especially hard by the pandemic, the outpouring of support by lighting companies was especially poignant.

A broad range of lighting manufacturers were represented with Dutch rental company MM Licht & Geluid proudly taking part in the action by filling the sky southwest of Rotterdam using Elation Platinum HFX™ luminaires and other lights. “We participated by sending bright beams of light all over our region and lighting up our location with minimal staff of course,” said Maarten Alleman of MM Licht & Geluid.

“The idea was to do something which people could enjoy from home. As a lot of us are currently stuck without production work, we lit up the sky and landmarks as a show of solidarity and support for the heroes of our society, but also for everyone else doing their part, even if just by staying home.”

Links:

Nexo goes live with Audioversity online training

Led by NEXO’s primary training instructor Nicolas Poitrenaud, the presenting team includes NEXO engineers from all over the world, who will work in four different languages (English, Spanish, French and German). All tutorials are free and open to any interested party: no special knowledge of NEXO equipment is required.

Nicolas Poitrenaud

“We’ve carefully considered these sessions so that they will also interest engineers and venue owners/operators who may not yet be familiar with NEXO systems,” explains Poitrenaud. “We are confident that these Facebook Live sessions will provide skills and knowledge to enhance the business activities of many professionals, especially in these difficult times.”

Broadcast using Facebook Live, the first session will be The Fundamentals of Acoustics, covering topics such as the basics of acoustics and psychoacoustics for live sound applications. Sound radiation, propagation and perception will be explained in order to give online students competency with the main acoustic parameters and phenomena.

Broadcast date: Friday 10 April at 15.00 hrs (GMT+1) More on The Official NEXO Page

The next class will be an Introduction to NS-1, NEXO’s proprietary acoustic simulation software programme dates can be found on the NEXO Facebook Page. This 2-hour tutorial will be presented in Spanish by Roberto Tschopp, with support from Hely Chirinos and Celso Papadopulos, all from our Latin American team.
This class will present sound system design principles using the software workflow starting from venue creation and system implementation, examining acoustical and mechanical settings to optimize performance in a venue. Participants can study two different solutions using NEXO point source and line source models according to various targets.

More on The Official NEXO Page

After the Easter break, a new series will be broadcast, looking at specific applications: performing arts venues, sports arenas and stadia, and many different sizes of live events. All dates and tutorial topics are listed on NEXO’s Facebook page.

Free Software, plus Training and Webinars from ‘disguise OnDemand’

Disguise, specialist for creative and technical professionals to imagine, create and deliver live experiences, has launched ‘disguise OnDemand’ a virtual hub that features access to free training and webinars exploring key features and elements of the disguise workflow.

Held in multiple languages, multiple times a day, the platform will feature exclusive content, including the opportunity for the community to take part in specialist discussions on key industry topics, and hear from customers during spotlight discussions on showstopping case studies.

Designed as a place for the community to learn and keep up-to-date on all things regarding disguise, free online training sessions take place on Tuesdays and Thursdays. They are planning on running a condensed version of the Fundamental and Pre-Production Workflows Training, broken down into a series of six one hour sessions where attendees can learn the core features, including the timeline, stage, configuring output feeds, and how to set up devices.
As part of a wider initiative to reach out to the disguise community, the ‘Designer’ software will also be free until September, and giving a series of discounted USB dongle giveaways, as well as partnering with Notch on a ‘codemeter’ dongle sharing scheme, allowing more people to access to both their software.

“We understand this is a really hard time for our industry, and disguise is committed to doing what we can to support our community of freelancers, partners and customers across the globe,” said Fernando Kufer, CEO at disguise. “These initiatives are vital to support our community and key industries, enabling more people to access our software, and learn new ways to maximise efficiencies. We’re looking forward to joining forces and hearing from our users.”

Keep up to date with the growing webinar and training schedule, and register by visiting Disguise training webinars

For more information, please visit Disguise website

With version 1.1.3.1, MALighting gives the grandMA3 a boost

grandMA3-V1131

Unveiled right on time to keep operators busy during the Big Confinement, version 1.1 of the grandMA3 software proves that the Germans, even staying at home, have not been idle lately, indeed. Just 112 days after the official release of version 1.0.0.3, this new version is strongly upgraded with many additional functions, fixes countless bugs.

Even if it does not bear spectacular steps ahead, MA did take the opportunity to rework many parts of his code. A work not necessarily easy to discover at first sight, but which allows to have a very great stability, for both software and graphics, and gives healthy bases for the next evolutions. Among the new features, some have been waiting for since long, while other ones are emerging.

Network

The Network menu is enhanced with Session and Station parameters, and a network update tool, the Network Update.

The new versions for the various devices (consoles, GPU, Nodes and OnPC) are included in the MALighting ZIP files, to be dragged and dropped into the MA update folder. This allows you to update any type of MA product, from any platform.
A new function allows to switch from mode3 to mode2, with the ‘’ SwitchGma2Mode ’’ command. The other way around is impossible, the grandMA2 code system does not allow this implementation

Park/UnPark

The Park and UnPark functions are back, by pressing the Go + and Pause keys twice, much like on the grandMA2. The possibilities of these commands are multiple, working either by projector, or by DMX output, or by attribute category (FeatureGroup).

Layout

New arrangement tools are available, identical to those in the 3D menu.
It is also possible to lock the position of a Layout, or its elements, in order not to accidentally change them.


Cue-Only

The ability to record in Cue-Only is again available, adapted to the Part-Cue browsing structure of the grandMA3


Tracking Distance

Brand new function, the Tracking Distance allows you to lock a value throughout several memories before going back to the previous tracking.
Quite advanced, this setting is a kind of tracking pyramid, which works with a Delta cue or a stop cue, and can even multiply itself.


Screens management

Thanks to this setting, the screens configurations can be adapted to external screens or computer monitors for the OnPC version, and thus recover its screens configuration whatever its screen.


Shortcuts

Long-awaited, keyboard shortcuts are finally making their debut in version 3, thanks to the small ‘ShCuts’ key in the command line.
Interesting bonus: editing these shortcuts is possible and can be found in the Preference & Timing menu.

3D

Small additional option in 3D, with the possibility of hiding and locking certain elements of the patch thanks to the columns ‘’ 3D selectable ’’ and ‘’ 3D Visible ’’.

Outputs configuration

To simplify the reading of DMX output configurations, the ’’Output Configuration’’ menu now has three playback modes, ‘’Condensed’’, ‘’XLR Only’’ and ‘’Full’’. For enhanced clarity, the options are represented by vibrant colors. DMX mode is the one used by default, rather than RDM mode.

Web remote

The configuration of the ’’Web Remote’’ items is improved by a dedicated menu, as well as the possibility of managing the output resolution in order to limit the bandwidth.

Universal Preset

The creation of Universal Preset is now possible thanks to the Preset Pool Preset option.

grandMA3 Extension

For those with grandMA3 fader wings, their connection is via the MA-Net network, and the settings in the ‘’Extension Configuration’’ menu. Note that it is possible to add such an extension per FullSize console, two for the Light and three for the Replay-Unit.

Changes

Quite a lot of changes have occurred, including the famous use of long press on the directory boxes now limited to recording and no longer allowing an “on the fly” update. In addition, in the list of available screen views, a new tab appeared with a classification and sorting of all available views.

Corrections

More than a hundred corrections were made, the complete list is available here on the official MALighting Website

Other expected features, such as the Move In Black or the Time Code Generator, are not yet included, but be assured that they are planned for next version.
MALighting thus participates in the maintenance of the lampies’ high spirits, they thus find what to work on and improve themselves, even during confinement boring times!

Zaziessenciel, tailor-made LED lighting

We guarantee that no Instagram filters have been added to this photo. Joking aside, the red and blue mix of the beams creates a very original saturated scene.

The multifaceted and emblematic Zazie is alternately a model, a singer, a TV talent show voice coach and, above all, the author and composer of well-known French pop music, deeply in love with the French language and with her audience.

(From left to right), Michael Zeitoune, video and lighting technician; Laurence Duhamel, lighting director/operator; Harold Mathieu, lighting technician and followspot operator; Andi Watson, lighting designer – the entire lighting team with more than one trick up its sleeve.

She needed a lighting team that could live up to her imagination, and she found it with that little bit of madness that makes all the difference in Andi Watson, her lighting designer, and Laurence Duhamel, her lighting director, as well as Harold and Sylvain. The four of them were ready to get the job done.

I take the train to Lille from Paris where I join the lighting team near the Théâtre Sébastopol, a 19th century establishment recognizable by its enormous stage cage visible from the outside. I meet them in a restaurant where they round off their lunch with a little coffee and a diabolo grenadine. Immediate boarding for planet Zazie!
Laurence, Harold and Sylvain make up the lighting and visual team for the tour – Laurence, along with Sylvain or Harold for the lighting, while Mika handles the video. Andi Watson, the lighting designer who created the show, joins them on a few dates to help evolve the programming.

A Completely LED Rig

Laurence is a lighting designer and console operator. With over than 30 years of experience in this field, she has, among others, worked for Sexion d’Assaut. In fact, we have written about her here. She’s a wonderful gal, with exceptional empathy, who suggested that I go for a tour of the decidedly modern and powerful LED rig of this tour, supplied by S Group.

Laurence Duhamel, shock and charm lighting operator on this tour, together with backliner Pascal Scossa. They started out in the business together.

the transition is complete here, as one of Ayrton’s most recent creations, the Khamsin spot/profile, leads the way. The kit also includes Spiider, the latest multi-source LED wash from Robe, as well as the X4 Bar and JDC1 from GLP.
All of them are LED fixtures, which have their advantages and disadvantages compared to lamps. Even though these units are catching up in terms of power, they are perceived by some musicians as a bit aggressive to the eye.

SLU : Could you explain the rig in more detail? Shall we start with the Khamsins?

Laurence Duhamel : The Khamsins mounted in the grid are used in the conventional way: for beams and gobo projection, or for strobing.

Khamsin and Spiider together in backlighting.

There’s everything in them. There are two rotating gobo wheels, which leaves quite a wide choice with six gobos per wheel plus the animation wheel, especially since the gobos are really interesting.
And then there are the framing shutters, the iris, the focus and the zoom. All things considered, it’s quite heavy, at 39.8 kg, but it’s very complete and offers a nice dimmer curve and a nice strobe curve too.

It’s a nicely built unit. I was pleasantly surprised by the white beam, which is very well calibrated. It doesn’t have a hot spot in the middle, like you get with other fixtures or Beams. The big advantage of this light is that its white LED source is powerful enough to push through the color wheel and have nice color mixing. It produces great bright colors, with greens and pastel hues. This eliminates the very “RGB” aspect of LEDs.

The white from the Khamsin is well calibrated on the screen and very powerful!

SLU : Was that a concern you had?

Laurence Duhamel : Yes, definitely! And whether it’s an Ayrton, a Robe or a GLP, they allow you to get real deep blues, and real UV… something we’ve never had before. The UV is the blue LED that we darken by lowering the intensity, without ever having it the way we’d like… It’s a filter that we use a lot in shows and when you don’t have it, well, you suffer… (laughs). Likewise, when you can’t create beautiful acidic greens, it’s a shame! And when you get an ideal green, it’s usually at the expense of amber.

Green tones with a touch of blue, Zazie is well highlighted in this palette of cool colors.

SLU : Do these LED fixtures save on costs?

Laurence Duhamel : They consume less power, even though it’s still 1,100 W for the Khamsin. As there is no serious heating, the mechanics suffer less and therefore the fixtures are more reliable. plus there is no lamp to replace.

On a rig like this, completely LED, we’re at less than 60 amps per phase, whereas we’d be at 120 amps per phase on a rig with conventional lamps. This means lower power consumption, less heating, fewer breakdowns… it’s easier to manage on the road.

SLU : Are there any issues related to these “new” light sources?

Laurence Duhamel : No, not really, except that the flicker frequency can be unpleasant for the eyes of sensitive people. Indeed, for performers on stage as well as for technicians, getting the light from a lateral source in the eyes can be uncomfortable. The monitor engineers position themselves so that they don’t have these LEDs in their eyes all night long.
Zazie doesn’t complain about it but there are artists who can’t stand it. The fixtures hung in the roof aren’t bothersome, nor are the front lights, because the singer and her musicians are mainly looking at the audience. It’s really what’s on the floor that’s hard for them to bear. But you have to light them, so there aren’t too many alternatives.

SLU : There are also 20 Spiiders in the rig…

Lateral totems combine a Robe Spiider and a GLP X4 Bar 20. They are practical, and don’t need to be disassembled for transport. This saves time and space.

Laurence Duhamel : They are hanging from the back truss and the down-lighting truss. The Robe Robin 600 was one of the pioneer LED washes. The Spiider is even more powerful. It’s a great unit that puts out a lot of light.

The powerful white beam from the Robe Spiiders.

There is also one on each of the four lateral totems, two on the right and two on the left, that, together with an X4 Bars, provide lighting for the musicians. Finally, on the floor in front of the screens, there are alternating X4 Bar20s and JDC1s.

SLU : The combination of GLP X4 Bars and JDC1s made sense to Andi Watson, who designed the rig?

Laurence Duhamel : Yes, they have exactly the same colorimetry because it’s the same manufacturer. The X4 Bar 20 opens up enough to light the musicians laterally without having to move them too far away, which is the case here because the totems are 1.5 meters away from a musician, and we can cover them well. It’s a really good fixture with nice colors.

The GLP JDC1s do all the work to kick off the show.

The JDC1 can be pixel mapped, with its 12 zones that can be independently controlled in intensity and color around its line of white LED strobes in the middle. The tilt of the fixture is also motorized. And it also produces very beautiful colors – real UV and real pastels – and that’s not always easy with LEDs, which always have a slightly acidic and electric aspect. But that’s really unique to GLP. I’m happy with it; it’s solid and it’s got punch!

The line of GLP X4 Bar 20s and JDC1s is placed on the floor upstage, just in front of the video panels. These bring all the punch to the show and don’t take up any space.

SLU : How do you use this line of back lights?

Laurence Duhamel : We mainly use them to punctuate the beat. We do some little chases on the X4 Bars that we repeat on the totems with the same effects.

SLU : Have you had any technical problems with these fixtures?

Laurence Duhamel : Only one mechanical problem: the gobo wheel of one of the Khamsins was rotating but jerky, and we had one broken dichroic glass because they can get a little roughed up during transport… so, it happens. As for the Spiiders, we had a failure on one of the central LEDs, due to a soldering problem.

SLU : How are these problems dealt with?

Laurence Duhamel : S Group takes care of them via Sylvain Ibanez (sometimes substituted by Harold Mathieu, as here in Lille). He is the one on the tour with us responsible for the lighting company. A malfunctioning fixture is automatically replaced. In the past, we would repair them on the road because there were a lot of breakdowns, but it’s no longer the case these days. For the broken filter, we only changed the tray, not the fixture.

In orange, the Khamsins stand out from the powerful flux of the Spiiders, enhanced by the JDC1 in the background.

SLU : How is the network set up?

Laurence Duhamel : At the level of data transmission, there is Art-Net to control the video and lights, and MA-Net between the console and the NPU, because we work with the fixtures at full parameters. On a single DMX line, there are only five fixtures, that’s it (laughs). So inevitably we have a DMX line even with a small kit because the console is limited to 8 DMX universes.
As we’re well above that, we use an NPU to double that number. We run a fiber connection between two V-LAN switches. One V-LAN is for Art-Net and the other is for MA-NET. We could have configured a third V-LAN to run the intercom. On smaller projects like this, it’s not difficult to manage, but on larger projects, it’s a full-fledged switchboard, which is quite a new thing, by the way.

Made to order by Andi Watson

Andi Watson took care of the design and – as an exception this evening – also the console.

At the back of the stage, an LED screen displays the media from an image bank. Just in front of it, Andi chose to place some specially designed filter panels of the same height.

The panels and their distorting mirror effect: very opaque unless backlit, a bit like a one-way mirror.

Only two manufacturers in the world supply them, one of which is located in the south of France. This material is durable, as the panels came through the 2019 festivals without breakage or scratches.

SLU : At the rear of the stage, you have installed a system of LED screens together with very unusual panels.

Laurence Duhamel : The material of these panels is quite flexible. With the changes in temperature, it evolves. In the morning, they’re all tight and warped, while in the afternoon they relax and soften in response to the heat, a bit like a mirror.
They can be arranged into cubes, or used in conjunction with video, as in this case. Our LED wall is positioned right behind these staggered panels. If we don’t light them from behind, they’re mirrors.
By lighting Zazie and the musicians, we have their reflections in the mirror, combined with the image displayed by the LED wall that passes through it. Zazie plays around with this for a bit during the show, which was the goal.

The Khamsins are in perfect harmony with this warm atmosphere of flames on stage. It’s cold in Lille except at the Sébastopol.

This concept, which Andi devised exclusively for this tour, was made to measure by S Group. You can change the angle of the mirrors, according to a configuration that has been carefully studied to adapt to the different sizes of the stages, which are sometimes small.
So here in Lille we have our eight panels, sometimes we can only fit six. So we give them a little more of an angle or we close them up some.
During transport, everything is optimized; the panels are protected with aluminum rails. Like the totems, we load them straight onto the truck. This saves space and time, too.

The aluminum rails that protect the panels during transport.

SLU : Did the LED wall require any particular adjustments to match the lighting fixtures?

Laurence Duhamel : We’ve lowered the intensity of the wall a little bit over its entire length. But, depending on the video content, which is more or less dense and dark, we vary the intensity from the console.

LED video screens are combined with PMMA panels to vary the content on the screen, while at the same time reflecting the action on stage. A great idea from Andi Watson to enrich the overall visual on stage!

Obviously, the video wall installed at the back of the stage tends to reduce the depth a little. So, when programming, you have to strike a balance between the displayed content and the lighting. They are supplied with a classic 16 A power supply and the signal is daisy-chained from screen to screen.

SLU : How did Zazie feel about this set piece?

Laurence Duhamel : Zazie trusts Andi Watson, who has been her lighting designer for years. She approved this project from among several that he proposed to her. But I think she has always had some video, more or less of it depending on her budget. On the last tour, it was old TVs interwoven one on top of the other. On this tour, we’re playing more with the reflection of beams, the reflections within the scene…

SLU : Is there any time code on this show?

Laurence Duhamel : No, I’ve got everything on the grandMA. I feed the video content from the Catalyst, our server media. Everything goes through the network and I manage the image from the console, kind of like a supplementary fixture.

Power and network racks on the left and, on the right, the Catalyst system.

SLU : How long does it take to set up this rig?

Laurence Duhamel : It’s really quick. For the lighting, in 45 minutes we have rigged and tested everything that’s hanging. Then we wait for them to set up the stage to set up the video. In the morning, in three hours everything is set up: backline, sound, lighting and video.

SLU : For smaller venues are there any changes other than the size of the screen?

Laurence Duhamel : Our set is designed for a stage front width of 11 meters, which is the distance between the most widely spaced fixtures. It’s quite conventional because we based ourselves on a total width of 14 meters, which is about the same as the Olympia. Here in Lille we had to tighten it up a little bit. At the Vichy Opera, we couldn’t set up the video.
It wasn’t a question of a space on stage, but that we couldn’t get the LED panels into the building because the doors are too small. There were rooms where we had to limit the load by, for example, hanging only four Khamsins, or 160 kg + 20 kg of cabling. It’s in these moments that we found a different show.

The panels are mounted on a rail and can be angled to suit the width of the stage.

SLU : Could we talk about alternate versions of the show?

Laurence Duhamel : We always start from the previous day’s show, that is to say, with the latest modifications. But as far as the video is concerned, we have what we call mixes. There are several variations: a full mix with all eight panels and a mix with six panels.
On the other hand, the totems that are used to illuminate the musicians are essential. We played in a room where I couldn’t add any lighting on the floor, not even the totems. I had to use what was there. On the other hand, I was able to keep the back truss, which gives all the energy to the show.

RoboSpot holds the ‘key’

As Laurence has explained, she has to adapt her kit to the configuration of each of the venues on the tour. In Lille, she has to do without a front truss, which normally holds six Khamsins, four Spiiders and a BMFL/RoboSpot. Hence the importance of the side totems that light the musicians. This also explains the choice of the RoboSpot tracking system coupled with a BMFL to provide key lighting for Zazie, the only lamp-based fixture in the rig.

The BMFL followspot is positioned traditionally for this date in Lille. In the absence of a front truss, it is essential.

SLU : What do you think of the Robe “mopeds”?

Laurence Duhamel : I think they’re great! Being able to attach your followspot to the front truss and give it a bit of angle as needed is very handy, even if it’s not always easy to find a place for the BMFL with the remote camera in some theaters. When you’re in the Zenith and you have your front truss every day in the same place, it’s easy. But for us, every day it’s the same question: “So where are we gonna put it?”. And with the remote camera, there’s a little bit of latency. Harold or Sylvain, who control it through RoboSpot, have had a little time to adjust and now they have the hang of it. It’s like anything else.

The Robe BMFL and its remote camera work with the RoboSpot system. Here the BMFL is installed in the upper balcony of the Sebastopol, due to the lack of space and of a front truss.

Anyway, I find it super-practical compared to a classic heavy and fat followspot that may require climbing a tower or being placed in the catwalks. And often you can’t get the right angle, whereas, with this system, you can do whatever you want with it. Still, we have to keep in mind that we are limited by the network cable and the maximum 80 meters between the operator position and the camera.

For this configuration at the Sebastopol theatre, we installed the ‘moped’ in the control room and the BMFL followspot in the upper balcony, for lack of other possibilities. As with other products, we have been looking for a solution and now we’re getting somewhere. On this tour, it’s used in its simplest expression, that is to say a followspot on a single artist, but on other tours where five, eight or ten fixtures are linked together, it’s magnificent.

SLU : What are the parameters controlled by the operator?

Laurence Duhamel : It has the classic pan, tilt, iris, zoom, focus and dimmer. As for me, from the console, I control the color, the dimmer and the effects.

Conclusion

This superb show is all nuanced by the work of the beams. Unfortunately, the still photos can’t capture Andi Watson’s meticulous programming, which contributes a lot of substance and detail to all the scenes. It’s alive; it’s beautiful. The Khamsins generate beautiful colors and sculpted beams with their elegant gobos. This is a choice tool for all lighting designers, and Andi Watson has embraced it.
The blue scenes are particularly effective, luminous and very intense plunging into some of the songs such as “Je suis un homme”, in which the artist bathes in the power of the Spiiders with a slightly electric Khamsin touch.

The Khamsins and Spiiders work in harmony with the ROE LED wall.

Electric and psychedelic, also, is the scene on “Toc Toc Toc” when the red beams of the Spiiders turn magenta in the powerful blue from the BMFL, all in front of the distorting effects of the panels. The atmosphere on stage is surreal.
The Khamsin’s beam is powerful in colors, and stands out from the Spiiders, even in blue tones. Andi also plays with the mirror effect to lengthen the beams. Between the content on the LED wall and the distorted reflections provided by this material (that comes alive according to the temperature of the room), the result is very vibrant, very elegant, and with a zest of madness.


The Video and Lighting team members

Andi Watson: Lighting designer
Laurence Duhamel: Lighting director/console operator
Sylvain Ibanez: S Group project head/RoboSpot operator
Harold Mathieu: RoboSpot operator
Michael Zeitoune : Video manager

Lighting equipment

– Ayrton : 13 Khamsin 750 W White LED 40,000 lumen (7 on the back truss and 6 on the front)

– Robe : 24 Spiider used in control mode 4 (12 on the back truss, 4 on the front, 4 for the audience, 4 laterally on totems) and BMFL Followspot

– GLP : 9 X4 BAR 20 15 WATT RGBW LED 4 laterally on totems for the musicians (5 on the floor upstage for backlighting, 4 JDC1 LED strobe + strobe-Tube LED et 12 12 pixel-mappable zones

– video equipment: 8 ROE LED panels 1.2 m x 2.40 m, 1 Catalyst media server