The show, staged outdoors at the Twinwood Arena in Clapham, is a regular gig for JAP Sound, featuring a 40-piece orchestra on the first day, and the tribute bands on the second. However, this was the first occasion that Jason Price of JAP Sound was able to deploy the full suite of RSS digital tools, including the new M-48 personal monitor mixers.
With the support of RSS's Simon Kenning, the JAP Sound team opted for a system set-up that had been trialled at the Glastonbury Festival, using S-1608 snakes connected to a M-400 monitor console, with splits via a hub running to a second M-400 at front-of-house.
"We buried a 100m of Cat 5 under the field," explains Jason Price of JAP Sound, "but there was no loss of signal or level over such a long cable run, and we didn't have to drive the pre-amps as hard we would have done with an analogue multicore."
"By sharing the input gain from splits at the stage, either M-400 console can take the pre-amp control, depending on how you set up the Snakes," explains Simon Kenning. "In the analogue world, both engineers could have gain control, but in the digital world, they can't - by splitting the signals, we are able to give clean signal to front-of-house so that the engineer has complete control over level."
Acting as monitor engineer for the Bootleg Beatles, Kenning was able to appreciate at close quarters the advantages of RSS's new M-48 personal monitor mixers. "These are a huge benefit to a noisy stage. I could instantly dial up and listen to each musician's mix; in fact, the M-48 has the memory capacity to recall set-ups for up to 16 different bands."
Earning an enthusiastic endorsement from front-of-house engineer Mark Emery, the M-400-controlled system impressed Jason Price for its clarity of audio as well as speed of installation. "We used the same configuration for the Rhythm Festival, staged at the same location, and engineers told us it was a pleasure to mix on."
(Jim Evans)
