ON THE ROAD: Sting


Below: Back To Bass is smaller and more intimate than Sting’s previous productions, mostly playing theatres; The singer / songwriter was accompanied by a host of talented musicians including fiddle player Peter Tickell and lead guitarist Dominic Miller.


“With this Clair i3 System, you get amazing


definition and clarity, but of course, you have to be careful in a bigger air space. If you use this system in a bigger venue, you have to be very careful about how you array it; that you get enough throw out of it, that you get enough punch for the longer throw, which means more components pointed in the longer direction,” Page said. At the venue in Toulouse, Page wanted to


reach the very back of the tall, 4,000 capacity sold-out room, which had both a standing floor space and a seated, raised area. “The vast majority of the system is pointed pretty flat and straight ahead, the reason being because I know I don’t have a high Q system, so I get around that with the sheer amount of components pointed in that direction. With our bigger i5 line array system, I could get away with less boxes pointed in each area and curve it some more, because I’d have a higher Q system, but the i3 is perfect for this tour as it’s essentially theatre sized venues.” Clair’s high-powered definition BT218 subs,


driven with the incredibly high-powered Lab. gruppen PLM 20000Q amplifiers are also on show. Page continued: “If you use subs right and you align them correctly, you don’t need that many to get the ratio to work for you. I put them on the floor so that I get nice coupling, and stacking vertically is a nice alignment too. They’re very tightly time aligned to the main i3 system. The front fill is our older design, the Clair


P2, which is a two-way system; a 12-inch and a horn.” The P2’s are timed carefully in two zones:


in the inside centre and the outside. He continued: “The trick with front fills is to get the definition and vocal projection over the sound that’s coming off the stage gear in perfect time to the main system to maintain the correct acoustic image, because the audience down there are standing so close, that they’re out of the direct sound pattern of the main arrays. I feed the front fill with a special mix which consists of a mix of the vocals mixed with the full mix from FOH, therefore the vocals end up 3dB higher than the band.” Part of Sting’s reputation as one of the most


unique and reliable voices in the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame is, at least in part, due to an audio team with an unrivalled knowledge of the singer’s needs. “I’ve got an exceptional crew out here. One


thing about a Sting tour is that it’s a very close- knit family and that comes from him. He expects the best all the time and we deliver the best. Everybody here is very experienced and skilled at what they do. If ever we do run into a problem, it’s fixed instantaneously because we are people who know how to fix an issue instantly from all our combined experience. “We work very hard with Sting’s own crew


to keep it as together as we can. What I find in this business generally is that at the rank and file crew level of touring, you can’t pay enough


money for the hours; it’s very early starts, working late into the night to get on a bus, travel and still work all day into the next night, so the golden rule for me when I’m training crew people, is that they have the initiative and above all else, do they want to be here? If this job is not what you enjoy doing in terms of the hours or travel, then you shouldn’t be here. You have to really love what you do out here, and have a real empathy for it. These people want to be here and it shows in their work ethic.” Systems Tech Charlie Hernandez Jr can be found flying the i3 System and setting up and connecting all the subs and front fills. He is also involved assisting Page in his very exacting system tuning and optimisation process.


A SPECIALLY DESIGNED CONSOLE For his role at FOH, there is only one console Page would use whilst out on the road, and it just so happens that the audio pro was heavily involved in the design process of his Studer Vista 5 SR. The console is a live version of the


manufacturer’s larger studio Vista series. Said Page: “I originally saw the broadcast studio version and fell in love with the user interface, it’s a touch screen and very intuitive. The key to any digital console is how quick it is to learn and how quick it is to get around on because most digital consoles these days have layered control surfaces. Live mixing is immediate, so if it’s not intuitive - how to get quickly to a channel or


TPi MARCH 2012 • 05


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