Although Morandi's best-known songs are his older ones, there's nothing dated about his concerts from a technical point of view. 'Stasera Gianni Morandi' had a huge cutting edge audio and lighting rig supplied by contractor Agorà of L'Aquila, as well as an eye-catching multiple LED screen set-up by Eurovideo.
Sound designer Daniele Tramontani is rightly proud of having set a trend followed by other artists when he designed Morandi's first (1996) concert-style rig in a TV studio in Rome, after the artist said he wanted to keep the feel of a full-scale live production. The Rimini show was no exception, as Tramontani explained: "The FOH set-up had nine V-Dosc, three dV-Dosc and five SB218 subs per side as main L/R clusters, six V-Dosc and six dV-Dosc on the two clusters flown to cover the side areas of the hall's tiered seating, plus a delay set-up flown level with the FOH mixing platform to cover the far end: this consisted in six dV-Dosc and two dV-Subs per side."
There were four audio mixing locations: a DiGiCo D5 Live FOH desk, a playout system with two more D5s, a Midas Heritage 4000 on monitors, and a Studer console in the OB truck outside, where the Mediaset audio team added ambient mics with applause, incoming phone calls, etc. The FOH and broadcast desks were linked via fibre optics, and the latter was manned by Franco Finetti, assisted by Stevan Martinovich and Enrico Belli.
Although he'd used digital desks in studio previously, this high profile event was not only FOH engineer Andrea Corsinotti's first outing with a DiGiCo D5, but also the first time he'd used a digital console in a live situation. Undaunted, he was enthusiastic with the results: "I attended a D5 training course at Agorà and studied it myself - although you've got to 'tell' the desk everything, time spent programming is amply repaid later - when everything can be recalled whenever you want it. Another key aspect is the sound - a great deal of attention has obviously been paid to signal conversion - there was once an abyss between analogue and digital sound, but with the D5, if you close your eyes, you can't tell the difference! Plus, thanks to all the on-board facilities, I only needed a couple of outboards, such as an Avalon unit on Gianni's vocals."
As well as handling 18 different feeds of music and vocals, the FOH system's three BSS Soundwebs were programmed in such a way as to feed out a separate mix-down of the mics used for speech: Morandi "interviewed" his guests, and also went out into the crowd to talk to members of the audience. So, as well as mixing a total of 56 channels from the artist and his band, Corsinotti also had to control the volume of the various zones of the sound system as Morandi moved around.
Monitor engineer Roberto del Duca had his hands full too, as all stage monitoring was in stereo and, as well as 12 Behringer Powerplay amps powering Sony 7506 cans for the majority of the band, plus four musicians on IEM, Morandi himself (who likes the same feel on stage as in the hall) had a monitor system of six flown V-Dosc plus two subs per side and two biamped Meyer Sound UM-1s under a grille at the front of the stage.
On the video front, as well as plasma screens strategically located in front of the stage as tele-prompters, Eurovideo also supplied a Lighthouse LVP 10 screen on either side of the stage, showing close-ups of the show fed from the OB truck. However, the Lighthouse panels were also used to great effect to form the set's backdrop, as Mario Prataviera explained: "Simone Borri and Alessandro Roccaro of AV
