ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands — In 14 years, Vrienden van Amstel Live has grown from a café showcase for Dutch acts to seven sold-out nights at Rotterdam’s 10,000-seat Ahoy Arena. The televised show’s three-stage setup required four DiGiCo SD7 consoles and seven of the latest SD racks to manage the audio, with all equipment supplied by Ampco Flashlight Rental.
More details from DiGiCo (www.digico.org):
The show included 17 top Dutch bands playing across the three stages, set up as main A and C stages at each end of the Ahoy’s arena (which featured a 3m300Kg per side moving PA and a hidden PA, respectively), with a connecting B stage in the middle. The highlight of each night was a Battle of the Bands, which saw the acts playing opposite each other on the A and C stages, with their singers walking along the central catwalk, each facing the other band via the B stage.
For the sound crew, that setup meant they would need to ensure that performers had access to their in-ear monitor mixes at any point along the length of the arena floor — a particular challenge for the show’s sound designer, Jeroen ten Brinke, who also had to deal with the fact that all bands would be playing for around 15 minutes, with no stopping for changeovers.
Jeroen solved these challenges by running the show with four DiGiCo SD7s – one mixing Front of House and one monitors on stage A, with that setup repeated for stage C. The use of an Optocore 2 loop made it possible to send complete mixes from stage A’s monitor SD7 to stage C’s (and vice versa) via virtual input racks. A fifth DiGiCo console – an SD11 – was used for presentations and audio playback of video clips.
Four 56/24 SD Racks were used for FOH and monitors on stages A and B, two on stage C and a single SD Rack for inserts for both FOH SD7s. This was possible thanks to DiGiCo’s new software feature, allowing user selection of card routing to the work surface, enabling one rack to be used for two consoles simultaneously.
Another new feature used for the show was the SD Racks running at 96kHz. “By running at 96kHz and eliminating intermediate analog conversion, people commented that it sounded like a blanket had been taken off the PA,” says Dieter van Denzel of Ampco Flashlight, who provided the show’s audio equipment.
“We used Dante with Dolby Lakes to distribute to the amp racks, which were situated in different positions around the arena,” adds Jeroen. “ This allowed us to stay fully digital on 96Khz and this, in combination with the new SD Racks, helped us to get close to an analog feel.”
Vrienden van Amstel Live was mixed by Jeroen Bas, Ronald Koster and Remco Verhoek at FOH, Merijn Mols and Bennie Veenstra on monitors and assisted by Jerone ten Brinke’s assistant and DiGiCo specialist Sydney van Gastel.
