The band launched their second album Ta-Dah in front of a hugely enthusiastic Saturday night party crowd, and were introduced by their special friend, Kylie. Sponsored by comms giant Motorola, all proceeds were donated the Global Fund to raise AIDS awareness in Africa. The show was also recorded for broadcast on E4.
Scissor Sister's FOH engineer is Adlib's Dave Kay. Another Adlib engineer, Ben Booker, looks after monitor world, and Adlib will also supply PA for the band's upcoming UK arena tour later in the autumn.
As the Scissors strutted their stuff, Dave Kay and the Adlib team engaged in the challenging task of treading the fine line to ensuring the sound was both loud enough to sate the aural demands of 15,000 revellers and contained enough to comply with the strict environmental limits. Not an enviable position to be in - too quiet and it might result in a public order issue with agitated punters, too loud and it might result in a shut down!
The system was designed by Tony Szabo. It consisted of four hangs of VT 4889, two mains each containing 11 elements and two out-fills each with eight elements. All four of these hangs were rigged onto two side goal-post frames, which also held the video screens and were several metres to the left and right of stage. The PA towers were located in these positions to minimise visual impact on the sight lines of the National Gallery that backed the stage.
The main sound issues were getting the PA physically high enough to cover the arena and simultaneously focussing it downwards to contain the sound. There was no room for a centre cluster of the eight VT 4888 front out-fills, because of the large scenic frame wrapping the stage mouth, so these were ground-stacked four a side each end of the camera platform. Additional fills were provided by a series of Adlib FD2 speakers and some the smaller AA112s on stands at the front-of-stage. Subs were eight a side Adlib 18 " DF4s, which the company use as a standard and highly effective combination with the VerTec.
The main system was powered by Camco amps and the subs by Crown V5002s. Dave Kay mixed the show using a Midas Heritage H3000, and was babysat by James Neale. He used standard BSS 402 and dbx 160A compressors and a variety of outboards including a TC M3000 reverb, Lexicon PCM 81 digital effects processor, a Yamaha SPX 2000 and a TC D2 delay.
System control was via the new Lake Dolby Processors, combined with the old Lake Contours, which Kay reckons certainly gave them the edge when it came to controlling and honing the directionability of the system to the minutest degree. Being wireless, they offer complete control of the system via a tablet PC which is really practical.
Adlib director Andy Dockerty was also on hand, running one of the new Soundcraft Vi6 digital mixers in parallel to the H3000 for multi-tracking. Kay has confirmed that the Scissor Sisters will be taking this console to the US for the first leg of their upcoming world tour.
Onstage all the band apart from Shears - who has a pair of Adlib MP3 low profile wedges - are on Sennheiser in-ears, so the stage sound is minimal. There were also another couple of pairs of wedges dotted around the stage for ambience, plus Nexo Alpha side fills.
Ben Booker mixed monitors using a Yamaha PM5D, his console of choice, utilising all onboard processing. He was babysat by Marc Peers, and Dave Jones who completed Adlib's onstage team. The Scissor Sisters used their own Sennheiser mics - E945 hardwireds and E845s for the radios.
(Chris Henry)
