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XTA and Capital Sound Thunder at Rockingham
London-based PA specialists Capital Sound Hire supplied an entirely XTA driven PA system for 50 Cent’s first outdoor UK performance this year, at Rockingham’s Days of Thunder.
These action-packed family days out that take place on the first Sunday of every month between May and October. Each thrilling race day has 170mph-plus racing and The Smash Hits Rockingham Stage, which plays host to a variety of top pop acts. On 6th June, Europe's hottest rap DJ Tim Westwood played a half hour set followed by a ground shaking performance by 50 Cent. To cope with the heavy amount of sub bass the rapper puts out, Capital employed a 16 per side Meyer Milo line array system with 12 of Meyer’s new 700HPS sub bass – its first use on an outdoor show in the UK. This would normally be more than enough, but on this occasion they added another 12 Martin W8L subs because, as Capital’s Paul Timmins explains: “50 Cents’ type of music is very sub bass heavy, so we needed to have a huge amount of subs! Centre fill in the pit was four W8Ls, two W8C conventional medium throw cabinets and four Meyer UPA-1Ps as barrier fills.
This was all driven by four XTA DP226s. “We had up to 24 zones with the Meyer equipment,” continues Timmins. “Because it’s a powered system, we were using the DP226s as line drivers to give us up to 24 lines to zone the system, and set up was with XTA’s AudioCore software.”
Dave Wooster, front of house engineer adds: “As well as using the DP226s as line drivers on the Meyer system, we were using them for EQ and crossovers on the Martin subs. I was also using my own SiDD, which goes absolutely everywhere with me, across the complete system. It provided overall fine-tuning using the compressor for minor system compression and dynamic EQ for sub bass enhancement and control.
“We also used XTA C2 compressors across all the DJ inputs. I’m getting to like them quite a lot. They work very well on drums, kicks and snares, and worked very well across the DJ inputs and instant replay sends.
“We used the delays in the 226s for time aligning the system. We didn’t use the EQ on the graphics because the EQ in all the XTA stuff is far more musical. It’s clean and transparent. Also, the limiting proved very accurate – there was a ridiculous amount of bass and nothing got blown up. They drove and EQd them perfectly!
“I used just about everything off AudioCore and SiDDcore. The interface makes my day a lot easier and quicker.”
XTA processing was also used on the monitor system, which was unconventional as 50 Cent doesn’t have monitors as such, he has two side fills and DJ fills. This was driven by another six DP224s, which Timmins says are a new addition to Capital’s stock and have been purchased for their superior quality.
“We have a large stock of DP226s and DP224s now and about 90% of our equipment is XTA driven,” he says. “We won’t use anything else on our high profile jobs.”
6th July 2004
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