48 l May 2013
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Phil Wardanticipates Eurovision with a snapshot of Sweden’s pro-audio business
SWEDEN IS what happens if you fax England to the Baltic. It comes out a little different, a little paler and smudged, but essentially it’s a post-’70s photocopy. The traffic signs, the clouds, even the Royal Family participate in a referred parallel universe, probably hinging on some ancient Viking plunder. The Swedish music industry has done nothing to counter this impression, ever since Ulvaeus and Andersson abandoned their rollmopped hootenanny played on moose antlers for proper British Pop. Once Dancing Queen had topped the worldwide charts for 1976, a golden era ensued that continued past the untimely death of production supremo Denniz PoP with his Brill-building style Cheiron Studios (Backstreet Boys, N*SYNC, Britney Spears) and into the current age of Agnes, Avicii and Robyn, all the time mingling in the crowd of UK and US hits unrecognisable as even Scandinavian. By the time of Rednex’s Cotton Eye Joe, Swedish
pop had gone as far West as anyone could. Accordingly Sweden has
propagated a pro-audio industry to match anything Occidental. Studios have closed, festivals have multiplied and TV talent shows spew their voices onto the blood and sand of the arenas like a Roman feast. Frequency bandwidth has been stolen by voracious mobile phone companies; digital audio transport has infested sound reinforcement and installation but, most amazing of all, sound designer Lars Wern is NOT on duty for this month’s Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö. Sweden took the crown in Baku last year, but Eurovision veteran and therefore Sennheiser wireless ace Wern is elsewhere. Wern is VP of EM Nordic, a Scandinavian distributor of MI and pro-audio products, as well as being much in demand for FOH mixing and theatre sound design as CEO of rental and contracting company DM
music for the “Now they have three different
Sweden celebrates its success at the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest
Audio. Fundamentally the company is too busy with other projects for Wern to spare the time funnelling Azerbaijani circus acts through the annual broadcasting miracle, many of which projects continue to blaze a trail for his current wunderprodukt: Martin Audio’s Multi-cellular Loudspeaker Array, especially the latterday Compact iteration.
THE STOCKHOLM NIGHTCLUB WITH A FRENCH MENU
HAMBURGER BÖRSis the hot ticket for dinner shows, concerts and corporate events and has been since the 1700s, blending Swedish artists and, latterly, international draws from Rod Stewart to Liza Minnelli. FOH engineer and head of sound David Granditsky has recently upgraded with two Innovason Eclipse GT consoles, two DioCore racks – one with 64 inputs and the other with 48 outputs for monitors – and three SR16 mobile stageboxes to replace the old analogue snakes. “We wanted a system that was based around some kind of audio network,” he explains with more than a smorgasbord of zeitgeist. “Onboard effects were important, and also size and weight – we sometimes move the monitor console down from the balcony.” “The system now changes with almost no need of repatching a lot of
sizes,” Wern says, “with the release of the Mini at Frankfurt. What’s happening is exactly what I predicted for the system: it’s a fantastic solution, able to address noise control as never before. You can achieve a good, high SPL for the audience while maintaining a peaceful atmosphere for everyone surrounding the event. The directivity is a real breakthrough, and the best example I can think of is when we used our MLA-C system last summer with the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra at an outdoor gig called the Gardetkonsert. “With a 30,000-strong audience, the coverage was superb and yet the stage was almost silent – making the orchestra very happy! At another gig, the same orchestra was doing a youth concert at Frys Huset with a rap artist. They were loud, and I took the orchestra’s union representative, a cellist, to FOH to listen to the sound check. He then resumed his place in the orchestra – and genuinely thought I’d turned the PA off! It’s such a big difference in front and behind the system. In 25 years we’ve never had so many compliments about the sound.” This summer is packed with
analogue signals,” adds Brollan Söderström of Swedish distributor Electrosound, who supplied and commissioned the system. “Monitor outputs are swapped between monitor and FOH, following the hierarchy of EtherSound. The total of four stageboxes are set up in such a way that some are used for their live
shows, that run constantly, while others are free for flexible use when guest productions are visiting. This way, there’s no need for all that analogue repatching between different productions and shows.” “It’s not just our consoles that are French,” points out Granditsky. “We also have a DV-DOSC loudspeakers.”
tours, TV shows and festivals, keeping Wern occupied with DM Audio’s main inventory of Martin Audio speakers, DiGiCo consoles and QSC amplification and processing. In a sales capacity, EM Nordic is seeing QSC’s DSP products spearhead widespread adoption of audio networking while DM Audio itself is installing Q-Sys at Stockholm’s new Tele-2 football arena. Wern’s son, Richard, has also just won a contract for DM Audio to supply all the backline
for the huge Sweden Rock festival in Sölvesborg, so the legacy continues.
BATTLE OF THE BANDWIDTH Sweden has switched frequency bands for wireless mics and IEM systems, losing out like everywhere else to the likes of Vodafone and Microsoft. This has led Wern to reinvest £250,000 (€295,000) in new kit from Shure and Sennheiser, making the most of the buy-back options provided, to operate from 470kHz to 790kHz as well as in the European free band from 863kHz to 865kHz – although “there’s a lot of stuff in there that you don’t want to compete with”, says Wern. “The problem is that we already know they’ll take away the 700 band in a couple of years. They are so powerful, there’s no way we can compete.” On the board of Swedish
professional association Ljud Ljus Bild (LLB), Wern has been in negotiations with Swedish Post & Telecommunications and the government to get the pro-audio message across, just as similar lobbies have campaigned elsewhere. “Licensing has never been enforced,” he says, “and is so complicated anyway. As a result, the authorities have never noticed pro audio and production – we had 160,000 users but only 16 licences! It’s an issue they didn’t even know about.”
Martin Audio’s MLA-C system was a success when used with the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra at Gardetkonsert
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