The W8LC had already proved its worth on sidehang duties with Westlife, and once again production duties were in the hands of Production North - owned by Steve Levitt and Iain Whitehead - with the latter taking production responsibility for this set of dates.
While 24 Martin W8LC Compact Line Arrays and 12 x WLX subs were provided as the core system, two dollies of six W8LM Mini Line Arrays gave the FOH team of Mark Littlewood (sound engineer) and Sid Rogerson (system tech) options of groundstacking or flying depending on available rigging points and weightload restrictions.
The largest show was at the 12,000-capacity Sheffield Arena, and production deployed 16 x LC's and 12 x LM's per side. "This covered the arena superbly - in fact you couldn't fault the system at all; it was easy to set-up, using the ViewPoint software, and quick to rig and derig," said Littlewood. "Generally we tended not to use side hangs because it has a very wide dispersion, and we didn't need delays."
With the five girls backed up by drums, bass, keyboards, three backing vocals - and a lot of hard disk-triggered sample effects, Littlewood was operating off a full digital board, and was delighted with the results of the PA.
His confidence was echoed by Sid Rogerson, who ran the whole system control off XTA's AudioCore platform via a DP226. "There were venues I had never been to, and having that flexibility - with the six LM's on dollies as backup - was tremendous," he said. "At the Glasgow Armadillo for instance we had two rigging points per side and were able to cover the whole venue with just one hang of 12 x LC's. As for EQ, I was able to sort out the presets as we went from gig to gig - and just EQ the array rather than the room."
(Jim Evans)
