But Ho's greatest pleasure is taking Hawaiian music to people, performing it in concerts all over the world. And besides his ukulele, he always travels with his L1 portable sound system from Bose Professional Systems. From ukulele clinics at venues around the country, including Guitar Centre stores, to huge concert settings, Bose L1 systems and T1 ToneMatch components have supported Ho's live performances night after night.
Ho travels with a pair of Bose L1 Model II loudspeaker systems and uses one or both, depending upon the size and the acoustical nature of each venue. For the smallest venues, he'll use the Bose L1 Compact system, which combines conventional PA and monitors into a single sleek unit. Ho is also a user and fan of the Bose T1 ToneMatch digital multichannel mixer that features over 100 proprietary ToneMatch presets for instruments and microphones and includes the Bose zEQ, storable scenes and a suite of studio-class effects. These few components allow Ho to travel the world, ready to interface with any kind of performance venue confidently.
"I'm also an audio engineer, and I do all the mixing and mastering for our record label, DHC, so I know exactly how I want everything to sound," he explains. "The Bose L1 system and T1 mixer are the only way I know I can reproduce exactly the sound I want in any venue. The L1 system delivers great sound and the right dispersion - I set it up and I immediately have a 180-degree soundfield. For instance, I can plug an instrument mic into the mixer, call up that preset and I have the sound I'm looking for at the press of a button. We've tried using a variety of studio-quality microphone pre-amps live, but nothing comes close to the quality we get from the ToneMatch engine."
Ho plugs everything into the Bose T1 audio engine including the piezo-electric pickup on his ukulele, giving him complete control over his live sound. He can simply give the output of the T1 engine to the FOH mixer at a large venue and know that the exact sound he's hearing on stage is precisely the sound that's being sent to the house PA system. "It's a real confidence booster," he says. "I'm always sure that my mix is what I want it to be, regardless of the size of the room."
With his accolades and appearances in contemporary cinema hits like 2008's Forgetting Sarah Marshall, in which he sang Nothing Compares 2U in Hawaiian, he's become one of Hawaiian music's most recognized exponents.
(Jim Evans)
