"We were working against the clock from the moment we received our first call from Aiken on Friday morning and realized that there wasn't enough equipment available in Ireland to handle an event of this magnitude," said sound designer Paul Aungier. "By Saturday lunchtime we had confirmed Brit Row's involvement with their X-Line rig, but it meant the truck would have to set off before we knew the outcome of the match! Sadly they didn't have to turn round (we were robbed!) so instead we just pulled out all the stops to get the site prepared."
By Monday the truck from Britannia Row plus two engineers, Olaf Figenschou and Simon Travis had arrived on site to put the system together: "We deployed a total of 11 Xvlt cabinets and 10 X-subs per side," stated Aungier. "We would have liked to have had two cranes per side but this proved impossible due to space limitations on the small area of hard ground. However, thanks to Olaf and Simon's ingenuity we were able to create two hangs from just the one point which worked fine."
Meanwhile, the rest of the crew was concentrating on the control and stage areas. With large crowds anticipated, it was decided to move the front desk tower out to 80m with the video screen behind it flanked by two delay towers each comprising four X-Array Xf, four X-Array Xn and four X-Array X-sub cabinets. FOH control was via a Midas Heritage 1000 while onstage an XL250 handled the monitor requirements. Line checks and sound checks for monitors continued right up until the very last minute when finally, at 5.25pm on Tuesday, the X-Line hangs went up in the air. "We switched on the PA at 5.45pm, used the first couple of tracks as sound check and by 6pm we were rocking!" said Aungier with a grin. "Tom Skerrit at FOH found it so easy to get a band sound up that he spent the rest of the day with a big smile across his face! I have to say it sounded fantastic. The main bit of the show with the live interviews of the team and the manager onstage was the real test, and the clarity, even at serious distances, was awesome. Mark Kennedy (FOH for Faithless) was in the audience and he called me the next morning to compliment us on the quality of the sound but the funniest thing was when I went to collect my kids from school the next afternoon. Even my kids' headmaster was impressed - a great relief as I thought he was coming to tell me about their latest misdemeanour! It was also an extremely successful collaboration with Brit Row and one that we shall definitely be repeating in the future."
(Lee Baldock)
