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Barbra Streisand Tours with Sennheiser/Neumann Wireless Combo Mic

Barbra Streisand recently returned for a 20-date tour across North America with guests Il Divo, the pop opera quartet, marking the singer's first live concert appearances since 1999. The vocal microphone of choice for the diva and Il Divo was the Sennheiser SKM 5200 wireless handheld outfitted with Neumann's KK 105 S capsule, while the 'popera' foursome also made use of Sennheiser's 3000 Series RF personal

monitors.

   Front-of-house engineer and sound designer Bruce Jackson, who has mixed Streisand live for many years, reports that the Sennheiser/Neumann vocal mic won a shootout against competing systems. "I listened and compared it against some other mics that I was interested in," he says. "It worked out

well."

   Jackson, who was previously front-of-house engineer for Elvis Presley and, for many years, Bruce Springsteen, was especially impressed with the strong RF performance of the Sennheiser/Neumann mics, which were overseen on the tour by Aaron Foye. "I would take her mic and I'd wander the arena with that

vocal mic and do my listening tests," says Jackson. "I'd be in elevators and moving around the place and, where most mics would drop out, the Sennheiser just kept on going."

   Sennheiser microphones were also in use throughout the percussion section of the orchestra, with four Evolution Series e609s on John 'JR' Robinson's drum kit, plus a pair of MD 421s on vibes and three MD 441s on tympani.

   Jackson was assisted on the tour by a nine-man audio crew, which, in addition to FOH co-mixer Chris Carlton, systems engineer Dave Moncrieffe, included a backstage engineer, Kevin "Carl" Gilpatric. Kevin supplied string stems to front-of-house and orchestra submixes and stems to the two monitor engineers, Ian Newton, handling Streisand and Il Divo's respective onstage loudspeaker and mixes, and Chris Fulton, who managed the mixes and communications for conductor William Ross and the 58-piece orchestra.

   With 50 gold record and 30 platinum albums - 13 multi-platinum - to her credit, Streisand's record sales are unequalled by any other female artist. In fact, she is second in the all-time chart only to Elvis Presley, ahead of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. She has also earned eight Grammy Awards and Grammy's Lifetime Achievement and Legend Awards.

   In picture: the quintessential diva, Barbra Streisand, tours with the quintessential Sennheiser/Neumann wireless microphone combo. photo: Tom Briglia/FilmMagic.com

12th December 2006

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