AVAB co-owner and senior technical director Sven Persson explains: "They came back from the cold, played a comeback tour in Germany, and haven’t looked back since. When we started work on this tour we did a lot of work in pre-production to make the show as good as possible, and it’s just been going up and up."
Persson, audio director for the tour, has been a key figure in a-ha’s resurgence. He has worked live with lead singer Morten Harket since his solo album ‘Wild Seed’ in 1995, and continued working with a-ha when they re-formed. "His work is really important to us," says Harket. "The way we sound live now cannot even be compared to the way we sounded 10 years ago."
For the first time, AVAB specified a self-powered Meyer M3D/M2D system, all controlled by XTA DP226 digital loudspeaker controllers, along with XTA’s new Series 2 units - C2 digital compressors and G2 digital gates, along with a DP324 SiDD dynamics processor. "They’re extremely efficient," says Persson, "and the more we got to know them better they got. With a large, high quality sound system you need the best outboard in your drive racks to get the best performance out of the whole system." He adds: "The XTA people are very good at explaining how to get the best from the equipment; their service is great because they have such a professional attitude to the people who are using it."
(Lee Baldock)
