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Rammstein: Made In Germany Tour Brings The Full Package

Rammstein tour photo by Steve Jennings

Rammstein: Made In Germany Tour Brings The Full Package

Coming on the heels of a sold-out European arena run, German hard rock band Rammstein continues its Made In Germany tour with 21 dates throughout North America. A lot of offshore bands play in the States, but this time, Rammstein brought its entire production. And this was not some partial system with locally supplied racks and stacks. For this tour, a full-tilt, 120-box L-Acoustics rig came along for the ride, assembled, tried and tested before being packed into sea containers for the three-week ocean voyage to the States.

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Hot Rize performing onstage with a few effective mic choices including a Shure SM81 on mandolin and an SM57 on banjo.

Getting That Acoustic Sound

Miking Unamplified Instruments Onstage

Larry Cumings is hardly a newcomer to the art of mixing and miking acoustical instruments. This Grammy Award-winning engineer spent nearly a quarter of a century on the road doing FOH with the David Grisman Quintet and has been the audio producer and FOH engineer for the acclaimed Strawberry Music Festival for 30 seasons. Held in a large campground at 4,600 feet, high in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains just outside of Yosemite National Park, the event takes place during the Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends each year, with the three-day festival offering a non-stop lineup of bluegrass, folk and other styles of acoustic music.

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High frequency absorption versus distance

Understanding Curved Arrays

There is no escaping the sea change in professional audio, arguably initiated by L-Acoustics, towards widespread use of vertical loudspeaker arrays, more commonly named “line arrays.” Whether for large touring productions or the new generation of column loudspeakers installed in conference rooms, vertical arrangement of loudspeaker transducers is now firmly affixed in the industry’s consciousness.

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The new setup from AJP Design includes Danley Genesis Horns

Stadium/Arena Installation Showcase

Lambeau Field, Green Bay, WI

The home of the 2011 NFL Champion Green Bay Packers, Lambeau Field in Green Bay, WI, is famous, not only for Cheesehead fervor (the average wait time for the 81,000 on the waiting list for season tickets within the 73,000-seat venue is 30 years) but also for brutal winter weather conditions.

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Roland M-480 Live Mixing Console

Roland M-480 Live Mixing Console

For some years now, the Roland Systems Group has enjoyed a great deal of success with its M-series digital mixers. That said, I have never had the pleasure of mixing on one. Which is why editor George Petersen felt I was the perfect choice to review the Roland M-480 V-Mixer digital console. So, what you are about to read are my first impressions of this piece of technology.

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VUE Audiotechnik: A Different Approach

Back in March of this year, right on the eve of the Musikmesse/Prolight + Sound show in Frankfurt, there was a surprise announcement about a new pro audio company. The “new company” part wasn’t much of a shocker — new companies spring up nearly every day. But the real issue of interest here was that this new enterprise known as VUE Audiotechnik is headed by Ken Berger and Jim Sides, two well-known industry icons with an impressive track record.

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The completed theatre offers comfortable seating with excellent sightlines. Photo by Tim Cooper.

The Howard Theatre Renovation

Built a century ago, Washington DC’s historic Howard Theatre is back to life. Located near the corner of 7th and T Streets in an area known as “Black Broadway,” the historic arts landmark that launched the careers of Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye and The Supremes, reopened in April after a $29 million renovation.

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Frequency City handled production for this Mr. Speed (Kiss tribute band) show in Eaton, OH.

Frequency City Sound & Lighting

Like many regional companies, Frequency City Sound & Lighting Ltd. started off from humble beginnings. Like many others, it’s a familiar tale — local rock ‘n’ roll guitar player with PA (Peavey mixer/amp head, some mics and a couple Peavey SP3 speakers) decides to branch out and make money doing sound for other bands between his group’s gigs. Eventually the business grows into a serious operation.

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The second-generation iLok USB smart key can hold over 500 cross-platform (Mac and Windows) software licenses for applications and plug-ins.

“iLok, Therefore I Am”

We have recently completed James Taylor’s 2012 European tour, and I am writing this column while kicked back in a comfortable London hotel room, enjoying a couple of days of R&R. My flight home from Reykjavik to LAX was routed through Heathrow (yes, really), so I decided I would do two things. First, I spent two extra days in Iceland sightseeing with my friend (and JT monitor engineer) Rachel Adkins. It was the first time either of us had been to Iceland, and we each figured that we might never get back there. It is a starkly beautiful country, and we enjoyed every minute we spent there exploring the island. Second, I jumped ship in London and took a little time to myself. Everyone in our business deserves a little pampering once in a while.

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The Biz, FOH magazine photo by George Petersen

Dealing with Travel Visas

The down-easter phrase, “You can’t get there from here,” is a familiar one to anyone who’s ever asked for directions on a back road in Maine. Unfortunately, it’s becoming more recognizable to touring music artists as well, in recent years, and it’s not exactly music to their ears.

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San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall minimizes parallel surfaces to eliminate standing waves. The stage is surrounded by wooden lattice diffusors and adjustable overhead Lucite reflectors. Diffusors are installed on the ceiling, side walls and balcony fronts to break up sound waves and minimize slap reflections, and absorptive fabric panels can be moved to tweak reverberation time.

Acoustics 101

An ongoing struggle facing all live sound engineers is the impact of poor room acoustics on their mix. All too often, we find ourselves mixing music in spaces not intended for live music, or spaces designed for live music with minimal concern for acoustics. Sometimes we mix music in theaters that, once upon a time, were acoustically designed for unamplified music, the favorable properties of which go out the window once a PA is brought in-house.

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