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Longbow in Charge at Take That's Circus

$Longbow in Charge at Take That\'s Circus$

Capital Sound Hire, Take That's long-serving audio production company, had some unlikely obstacles to contend with when designing their set for the recent Circus stadium tour.
The band bounced onto stage like circus clowns and brought the whole circus to town including the Big Top.
An estimated £10m had been lavished on this tour, again production managed by Chris Vaughan, but for Capital's technical director Ian Colville and system technician, Al Woods, the presence of trapeze artists, contortionists, high-wire walkers and clowns streaming on to the main stage (with the B stage festooned in balloons and mammoth-sized human ‘elephants') was not about to compromise their carefully-worked Martin Audio sound reinforcement system.
In collaboration with the band's long-time FOH engineer Gary Bradshaw, they knew that given the configuration of the stage structure (with its Big Top appearance) there would be no scope for flying their Martin Audio subs, so they set up a horizontal bass array tucked neatly into the set along the front of the stage.
"I had a chat with Andy Pardoe at Martin Audio and decided to use a 12-cell horizontal sub bass array each side of the stage and electronically ‘bend' it to produce the required dispersion," recalls Colville. "This is something we haven't done on this scale before and it worked very well. We used an XTA DP226 to progressively delay the feed to the subs from the centre to the outside of the arrays. Considering we only had 24 subs on the stage, they produced tight, even coverage. Gary and Al were both very happy with the design and, for me, that's good enough."
Al continued: "By putting the subs on the ground we managed to get some coupling with the turf itself. We were able to curve the sound with time and physically move it electronically using one input and six outs on the DP226."
They also added a cardioid three WS218X sub array to the 14-hang delay towers. Where four (rather than three) points were used the delay towers were arranged in an arc, the outer towers measuring 65 metres from the stage and the two centre positions set 70 metres back.
The main PA system consisted of the Martin Audio W8L Longbow with two main and two side hangs - each comprising 14 x W8L Longbow enclosures and two W8LD downfills - with XTA processing handling all the system management.
As with the previous Take That tour there was a ‘B' Stage (where the show began) - situated some 40 metres from downstage - but this time it could not be served by its own PA system. "It's simply that there was nowhere to put the secondary PA," says Ian Colville, "so we used the main system to provide coverage."
Meanwhile, down at the stage, long-serving monitor engineer Steve Lutley was
sending mixes to a combination of IEM's and six of Martin Audio's classic LE700 floor monitors, as well as WS2A subs for the drum and bass players.
Al Woods is delighted that the time spent on getting the bass array right had reaped such dividends. He was also pleased that the delay configurations had worked so well.
He explained that the main PA coverage had been designed to extend across 70 metres of flat floor - making the angles tight - and 15 metres up to the bleachers; he knew the side hangs would cover the upper tiers and the delays the rear of the stadium and upper bowl.
The unqualified success of the Martin Audio sound system can easily be summed up in one simple statistic, Al Woods believes. "There were 1.2 million tickets sold and not a one audio complaint!" he says. "In fact we were the first [production] to go through Wembley Stadium without a single complaint - and that's official."
"And that's an impressive accomplishment by any standard," notes Ian Colville. "Al's personal standards are well beyond those of any other system tech that I know - the results speak for themselves."
photo: Gareth Cattermole

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Longbow in Charge at Take That's Circus

27th July 2009

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