www.psneurope.com
February 2014 l 37
livenews UNITED STATES Getting lucky
The annual Grammy Awards, held at the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles, offers a unique challenge for audio technology serving the creative arts, writes Mel Lambert
MOST YEARS there is a new item of gear that extends the technical envelope at the Grammys; this year, ATK Audiotek, which regularly supplies and operates the PA system for the ceremony’s live audience, added prototype custom subwoofers that use Powersoft M-Force subwoofer technology to extend the rig’s bass response by an octave.
Augmenting ATK’s main PA system – which this year comprised four identical hangs of JBL VerTec VT4889 line- array cabinets plus a delay ring, with VerTec VT4880A flown subwoofers – the two additional subs were placed beneath the centre of the combined A and B Stages, each one driven by a single channel of K10 amplification delivering 9kW.
Grammysat the “Each sub will handle 20kW,
but it got plenty loud here at the Staples Center and went down to around 17Hz! We also ran the subwoofer amps from a separate power feed, so that the transients and load swing would not affect the performance of other Power-soft K10 amp racks beneath the stage used to drive the VerTec arrays,” said Jeff Peterson, ATK system-design engineer. Unveiled last June at Info- Comm, the M-Force subwoofer drive system uses fixed coils and moving magnets. Powersoft says that, eventually, the technology will be offered to other companies
in OEM form. New technology was also
evident within the pair of Music Mix Mobile remote trucks used to prepare 5.1-channel music mixes for the Awards broadcast. DiGiGrid components with Waves SoundGrid enable the two mixers – John Harris and Eric Schilling, working on Avid D- Control surfaces – to use a number of critical Waves plug-ins with ultra-lowlatency. This year’s event saw French
electronic outfit Daft Punk bag five awards. Stevie Wonder joined Nile Rodgers, Pharrell Williams and the mysterious duo – who insist on wearing robot helmets to
FOH at the rehearsal for the Grammy Awards
conceal their identities – for a performance of Get Lucky. In other Grammy news, Bob
Ludwig, who is known to use Swiss manufacturer Merging Technologies’ Pyramix DAW at his Gateway Mastering studios, can claim a legitimate share of four of the gongs: Album of the Year and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical for Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories; Record of the Year for Get Lucky; and Best Historical Album for the Rolling Stones’ Charlie is My Darling – Ireland 1965.
www.digigrid.net www.powersoft-audio.com
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