TECHNICAL FOCUS: AUDIO Copyright Lighting&Sound America March 2013 http://www.lightingandsoundamerica.com/LSA.html Sound Developments at the 55th Grammy Awards By: Mel Lambert Music’s biggest night uses new JBL VTX by Crown I-Tech 3500HD and Powersoft K10 amplifiers. A pair of cabinets and DiGiCo SD consoles JBL Professional VTX S28 subwoofer arrays was flown above the center of the twin stage areas. When you reach the top of your game, cased more than 25 performances The new V25 cabinet features a pair Bert Lance’s popular philosophy “If it from a range of artists. of 2kW, 15" Differential Drive LF drivers ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” makes emi- This year, ATK decided to use new mounted on die-cast aluminum baffles, nent sense. For ATK Audiotek, coordi- JBL Professional VTX V25 three-way with four 8" Differential Drive midrange nating live sound for the Grammy line array cabinets powered by transducers and three D2 Dual Awards audience and performers at Crown I-Tech 12000HD amplifiers, Diaphragms with dual voice coil com- the Staples Center in Los Angeles with HiQnet Performance Manager pression drivers. “The VT25 rig sound- poses a number of challenges, the controlling built-in crossover, delay, ed great, with a noticeable improve- majority of which have been tamed and EQ functions. The PA system ment in the high end,” says ATK during the past decade since the event was comprised of four identical Audiotek president Michael moved to this downtown venue. But hangs of 12 V25 boxes covering the MacDonald, who joined the company new developments from loudspeaker audience area—with a stereo mix last September after five years as vice and console manufacturers can offer feeding an inner pair and a mono mix president of sales and marketing at subtle, but important, advantages. The to the outers—plus a delayed mono Harman Professional. “The new D2 HF evening’s telecast, hosted for a sec- feed for rear and side audience driver is very smooth—several band ond time by LL Cool J, drew a report- members delivered to 16 JBL VerTec engineers noticed [the difference]. ed 28.1 million viewers and show- VT4889 line array cabinets powered Under control of Performance Manager Photo: Courtesy of The Recording Academy/Wireimage 80 • March 2013 • Lighting&Sound America [software], the system worked well; it has come a long way from the first core HiQnet implementation.” Regarding future plans, “The les- sons learned are more evolutionary than revolutionary,” MacDonald says. “DSP control of the array to achieve different vertical coverage is interest- ing, as producers continue to chal- lenge the technical team on staging locations for acts putting the bands in various locations of the audience.” For the first time, ATK used DiGiCo SD series I/O racks and control sur- faces for all mixing and system I/O. “The main FOH consoles consisted of an SD7 for music mixing,” says Jeff Peterson, ATK system-design engi- Members of 2013 Grammy audio team. neer, “and an SD5 for production ele- ments,” helmed by Grammy Award regulars Ron Reaves and Mikael “and also because it has two more that contains all the vocal microphones Stewart, ATK vice president of special screens, which allows more flexibility and Pro Tools elements.” events. The production console han- in multitasking during the show. The In terms of sound for the 2013 dled 96 simultaneous inputs, including SD10 [for 2012] worked fine. The SD7s Grammy Awards, “The SD7 sounds Reaves’ stereo music mix plus pro- were added to monitors because really good with plenty of punch and duction tracks and announce mics, these positions required more I/O to clarity,” the music mixer concedes. “It while the music console accommodat- do the show safely.” is also very easy to use. These DiGiCo ed 168 inputs. “The A stage and B “I received sources from the A and consoles are English-built with that stage monitors were each controlled B stages plus prerecorded Pro Tools English sound I grew up with. In fact, by SD7s [helmed by Tom Pesa and tracks,” Reaves says, “and delivered they sound like a digital equivalent of Mike Parker],” Peterson continues. left/right, subwoofer/LFE mix and vocal the Midas boards I’m used to and “Last year, we found that the SD10s stems to Mikael [Stewart]. We patched deliver that clear, present English [for production and monitors] just did- a total of three 56-pair mults to my sound that we all like.” n’t have enough inputs for this show. SD7 console: one from the A stage, All of the consoles and system So the monitor positions upgraded to one from the B stage, and the C mult components were networked using a SD7s for redundancy, and the FOH production console upgraded to the new SD5. “Since the SD5 uses a single engine, to provide redundancy, we set up the SD7 FOH music console [which features a redundant DSP core] to take over production mixing duties and drive the PA system in the event of a failure. As we know, if you don’t pre- pare for failures, then any failure can ruin your show!” A fifth DiGiCo SD7 console was brought in, at the request of Justin Timberlake and Bruno Mars, for a guest mixer handling monitors for the A stage. “We chose the SD5 because of console availability,” Stewart says, Photo: The Recording Academy/Wireimage.com/Kevin Winter Wireless microphones and IEMs www.lightingandsoundamerica.com • March 2013 • 81 TECHNICAL FOCUS: AUDIO single DiGiCo fiber optic ring to carry located backstage. I/O signals from the stage and digital According to Dave Bellamy, from outputs to the various power ampli- Soundtronics Wireless, which handled fiers racks. “The optical ring was RF frequency coordination, some 45 maxed out with a total channel count wireless mics, 16 guitar/bass belt of 488,” Peterson says. packs, and 24 IEM systems—12 per “Compared with the older VerTec stage—were in use. “With so many series, the new VTX cabinet’s high end channels in operation,” he says, “the has been completely reengineered by spectrum was a lot tighter this year. It JBL,” says audio technician Andrew was like trying to get a size-15 foot “Fletch” Fletcher. “The high-end into a size-ten shoe!” response, around 4kHz, seems a lot “But the RF spectrum inside the smoother and more transparent in the Staples Center was a lot cleaner this VTX—much more pleasing to my ear year,” Bellamy recalls, “because all of than the VerTec. I was very impressed the last year’s unshielded LED screens by the DSP functionality of the Crown had been replaced with [newer-gener- [I-Tech Series] amps that, with the ation] LED displays, which made our ability to send pink noise to individual lives a whole lot easier.” A Phoenix 5 speaker components and to see antenna system provided ten pickup speaker impedance, made trou- zones made up of Widow Makers bleshooting very easy.” upstage left and right, Sidewinders “The VTX has a smoother high running at 900MHz, Dominators for end,” Stewart agrees. “The system the house, and Widows and seemed as if we weren’t pushing it as MiniWidows for stage left and right. hard; it felt less abrasive.” Taylor Swift, the opening act, used “The two VTX subwoofer arrays a Shure Axient AX Series wireless mic were arranged in a cardioid configura- in frequency-diversity mode. “The tion to focus more of the energy dual-channel model [AXT200 with towards the audience and away from Beta58 handheld] worked very well,” the stage,” Fletcher says. “Basically, Bellamy says. RF assistant Grant we hung nine cabinets per cluster in Greene recalls that 600 Duracell blocks of three: two forward-facing Coppertop alkaline batteries were boxes and a rear-facing box between used during technical and dress them, with the latter put out of phase rehearsals. “For live broadcast,” he with the forward-facing ones.” recalls, “we used close to 200 “ATK improved the coverage this Duracell lithium batteries, which pro- year and that made for a bit better vide a six- to eight-hour life, com- clarity,” says Leslie Ann Jones, from pared to the three to four hours we The Recording Academy’s Producers get from the alkalines.” and Engineers Wing, who once again As on previous occasions, Audio- supervised front-of-house audio. Technica, Shure, and Sennheiser sup- Various microphone signals plus plied a number of wired and wireless bass/guitar belt packs and line-level microphones for the awards ceremo- sources exited the stage area to three ny. Wiz Khalifa, Miguel, and T-Bone primary destinations: front-of-house Burnett used Audio-Technica Artist and monitor consoles plus the pair of Elite 5000 Series UHF wireless sys- Music Mix Mobile/M3 remote trucks tems with AEW-T6100 handheld trans- used to prepare 5.1-channel music mitters, while Elton John used a wired mixes for the TV broadcast audience. AE6100 hypercardioid dynamic for Stage sources were swapped between vocals. Jack White and his duet part- acts using a system of quick-connect ner Ruby Amanfu used an AT4050 multi-way connectors and stage boxes multi-pattern condenser microphone, located on the drum risers and linked as did jazz performers Chick Corea, to an “A2 World” switching center Kenny Garrett, and Stanley Clarke. 82 • March 2013 • Lighting&Sound America Backline mics included additional AT4050s for timpani, overheads, guitar cabinets, and horns; ATM250 hyper- cardioid mics for bass amp; ATM25/LE hypercardioids for toms; AE5100 condensers for hi-hat, ride, and overheads; AT4050ST stereo con- densers for overheads; AT4047/SV condensers for guitar cabinets; ATM350 condenser clip-ons for horns, timbale, and strings; ATM450 con- densers for snare-bottom and tam- bourine; and AE5400 condensers for kick drum.