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DiGiCo show dedicated socially distanced venue


The UK’s first dedicated socially-distanced music venue since the COVID-19 pandemic began recently opened its gates in Newcastle, presenting an eclectic programme of top line acts, and equipped with a premium festival kit list provided by AV company, Kingdom Ser- vices, centred around DiGiCo SD10 mixing consoles managing FOH and monitor sound.


Located in the city’s Gosforth Park racing ground, the Virgin Money Unity Arena consists of a pop-up amphitheatre,


with


500 separate elevated viewing platforms spaced two metres apart and hosting a maximum of 2,500 people. Local hero, Sam Fender, headlined the first two sold-out shows, followed by a diverse line-up of artists in- cluding Van Morrison, Maximo Park, Alfie Boe, Ronan Keating, comedians Jimmy Carr and Bill Bailey, as well as the Bongo Bingo dance phenomenon. “Originally, the series of events was going to be a drive through format but remarkably the organiser, SSD Concerts,


they do best. On the opening night with Sam Fender you could feel the buzz and the en- ergy throughout the crew and the audience.”


Sound system


Kingdom Services is supplying the entire sound system for the event series, comprising a d&b speaker system, and is employ- ing three of its DiGiCo SD10 consoles, one at FOH with a 32-bit rack, operating at 96k over fibre, and two working in tandem at the monitor posi- tion to make act changeovers easier. The monitor desks are running a sizeable 48 outputs


achieving even sound coverage and sonic detail, whilst adher- ing to the strict sound level lim- its imposed on the venue. “The situation is compound- ed by the fact that visitors are unable to circulate or move from their viewing areas as you would normally do in a festival scenario, so it is more imper- ative than ever that we give every visitor the same audio experience,” says Smith. “The SD10’s processing power and capacity, coupled with d&b’s array processing software, helped us map the site and de- liver the best audio quality.” Smith notes that the events are all running really well and


The UK’s first dedicated socially-distanced music venue since the COVID-19 pandemic began recently opened its gates in Newcastle.


managed to devise the biggest socially-distanced live event in the country, so that we are able to safely and practically run four events a week over a five- week period,”


explains King-


dom Services’ MD John Smith. Kingdom Services is an AV supplier based in Northallerton in North Yorkshire, with a high spec, premium brand stock list, which includes consoles.


eight DiGiCo “This was the first time we


have worked with SSD, a New- castle-based promoter which organises festivals in the area. We started discussing the lo- gistics of live event production in the current climate several months ago,” says Smith. “Like many industries, the live event scene has been blighted by the pandemic, so it’s heart-warm- ing to see a production crew out working again doing what


for IEMs and wedges, and there are SD Racks on both monitor desks. The sound system is complemented with Sennheis- er 6000 series mics and 2000 series IEMs. “We selected the SD10s be- cause they are very popular and the most rider friendly console we have in our warehouse. We can manage performers’ expec- tations across the board, and most engineers turn up with a show file and that’s it – nice and simple,” continues Smith. “The consoles also give us all the capacity we need with plen- ty to spare. The quality of the results is excellent, and the re- liability is second to none.” One of the major techni- cal complexities of the set up was the size of the venue site, which would ordinarily cater for a crowd of 15,000. The exten- sive area posed a problem for


P14 AV News October 2020


that feedback from Kingdom’s client is not only positive, com- menting that the audio quality is crystal clear and that the Covid


regulations have been


navigated and enforced suc- cessfully.


“Audiences have been very compliant with the rules and have quickly got over the strangeness,” Smith con- cludes. “The crew have re- mained Covid compliant with their procedures, such as send- ing FOH outputs to system con- trol during act changeovers to run the house music and audi- ence announcements, to allow time to clean the desk controls before the next engineer jumps on. All in all, it has been a pos- itive experience and it’s won- derful to be involved in a live event.”


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